Peter Abelard Quotes

I'm here to make sense.

It is the mission of the twentieth century to elucidate the irrational.

There is a profound difference between information and meaning.

In fairness, I don't think that everyone understands what I say, but I think they understand part of it and part of what the issues are... Just the same way that people like a good painting, I think people really like understanding, knowing about the world.

Speak not of what you have read, but about what you have understood.

It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand.

What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself... The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn't that true?

Explanations are clear but since no one to whom a thing is explained can connect the explanations with what is really clear, therefore clear explanations are not clear.

If we are ready to tolerate everything as understood, there is nothing left to explain; while if we sourly refuse to take anything, even tentatively, as clear, no explanation can be given.

If we go on explaining we shall cease to understand one another.

You should communicate with your other one. Understanding what they are on about is pretty key.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

Knowledge, may it be said, is higher than magic and is more to be sought. It is quite possible to see what is happening and yet not know what is forward, for while seeing is believing, it does not follow that either seeing or believing is knowing.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine.

For me, until I know that the audience really gets what I'm trying to communicate I'm not done.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

The one thing I seek above all else is understanding. Sometimes I'm so frustrated and I don't get it. But I'm lucky to have a good management team and people around me who explain things and answer my questions.

I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.