Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Knowing is not understanding. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.

There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery.

What we do not understand we do not possess.

What a man does not understand, he does not possess.

One who knows nothing can understand nothing.

Only when one is able to grasp wideness can one possess it.

If I'm going to talk about an issue, I better know what it's about viscerally.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.

If you don't know about it, you can't get it.

Understanding reduces the greatest to simplicity, and lack of its causes the least to take on the magnitude.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend

Comprehension follows perception.

Since a thing cannot be known directly or totally, one can only attune to it, with greater or lesser degrees of intimacy.

What we don't understand we don't possess.

Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!

The nature of our intelligence is such that it is stimulated far less by the will to know than by the will to understand.

Being informed is different from being formed, and the first is a common substitute for the second.

Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.

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.

Our understanding is correlative to our perception.