Other people can help you, but if you're not trying to understand yourself, nobody else can do it for you.

It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know others.

If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So, as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual.

No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else

I’m not sure we can understand another country if we don’t understand our own.

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.

The less a person understands his own feelings, the more he will fall prey to them. The less a person understands the feelings, the responses, and the behavior of others, the more likely he will interact inappropriately with them and therefore fail to secure his proper place in the world.

In the course of a long experience of the human race, I have learned that you can never make them understand anything, unless you rub it in.

We try to understand the pain of others but we can only understand it our way.

It is so difficult - at least, I find it difficult - to understand people who speak the truth.

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?

One who understands others has knowledge; one who understands himself has wisdom. Mastering others requires force; mastering the self needs strength.

She doesn't want you to understand her. She knows that's impossible. She just wants you to understand yourself. Everything else is negotiable.