people often confuse complex ideas that cannot be simplified into a media-friendly statement as symptomatic of a confused mind.

People hate what they don’t understand.

People reject what they do not understand because it makes them feel small. They would rather believe in some other reality, even if it is only an illusion, so long as it makes them feel bigger.

No matter how irrational it may be, people often tend to dislike what they’re unable to understand.

The more complicated the situation seems to be, the simpler solution must be. .. People believe that reality is complex, and therefore they are looking for sophisticated explanations for complicated solutions. .. Reality it is actually simple.

People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood.

The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.

What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will. [Nicht eine Schwierigkeit des Verstandes, sondern des Willens ist zu überwinden.]

[T]he very people who write so disparagingly about it either do not understand it, or I suspect even more, understand it all too well and do not like the implications of it.

Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.

If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem.

I'm so misunderstood that people misunderstand me even when I tell them I'm misunderstood.

People resent being shown that they don't approach the complexities of the problem — they don't know what exists beyond the surface ripples.

The tendency of some people to confound the woman question with the sex question evidences a lack of a scientific knowledge and appreciation of the fundamental principles of the two problems.