This post contains some of the best misunderstanding quotes.
Misunderstanding Quotes
1. “A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.” – James Thurber
2. “A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.” -Bob Dylan
3. “A single moment of misunderstanding is so poisonous that it makes us forget the hundreds of lovable moments we’ve spent together within a minute.” –Unknown
4. “A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after tomorrow.” – Johann Georg Hamann
5. “Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.” -Karl Popper
6. “Always say exactly what you feel. People are hurt more by misunderstanding than anything else.” -Louise Fitzhugh
7. “An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
8. “And it worries me how misunderstandings exist because people would rather have a hole in their heart than to talk their issues out.” -Faraaz Kazi
9. “As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences, everything gets distorted. Language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.” -Marcel Duchamp
10. “As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it” – William James
11. “Between two brains, there will always be misunderstandings and lies caused by parasitic smells, drafts and poor-quality reception.” -Bernard Werber
12. “Beware of the half-truth. You may have gotten hold of the wrong half.” –Unknown
13. “But as with all geniuses, being ahead of her time meant leading a rather lonely and misunderstood existence.” -Reham Khan
14. “But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.” -Daphne du Maurier
15. “But they were fated to misunderstand each other.” -Rafael Sabatini
16. “Change comes with both fear and some pain. Those two ingredients create mistrust, misunderstanding and misinformation.” – David Mixner
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17. “Clear up any misunderstanding before it gets to that point.” – Joel Miller
18. “Distance doesn’t separate people. Misunderstanding does.” –Unknown
19. “Don’t expect her to paraphrase her life for you; she was born to be a story. And if you can’t understand that, then perhaps she’s beyond your reading level.” -Jonny Ox
20. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
21. “Don’t judge my choices without understanding my reasons.” –Unknown
22. “Don’t make assumptions unless you know the whole story. If in doubt, ask the person directly.” -Unknown
23. “Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man’s brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn’t understand you at all.” -Aleister Crowley
24. “Excessive talk leads to misunderstandings.” -Bert McCoy
25. “Fear is a friend who’s misunderstood. But I know the heart of life is good.” – John Mayer
26. “Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another’s point of view.” -Nikola Tesla
27. “Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama.” -Miguel Ruiz
28. “Five minutes of communication can save a year’s worth of turmoil and misunderstanding.” -Joyce Meyer
29. “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.” -Albert Einstein
30. “He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.” -Elbert Hubbard
31. “I am only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand.” –Unknown
32. “I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.” – Jeff Bezos
33. “I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I said.” – Alan Greenspan
34. “I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.” – Clarence Darrow
35. “I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
36. “I stopped explaining myself when I realized other people only understand from their level of perception.” –Unknown
37. “I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.” -Robin Williams
38. “I’ve only met about or people who genuinely understand me. Everyone else just assumes I’m angry, sarcastic, or an asshole.” –Unknown
39. “If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.” – Criss Jami
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40. “If you knew how rarely people actually understand you, you’d speak less.”-Unknown
41. “In the end, everyone can understand themselves only. You are the only one to which you never have to explain what you mean. Everything else is misunderstanding.” -Renate Dorrestein
42. “In the matters of your mistake you defend it like a lawyer, in the matters of other’s mistake you act like a judge.” – Amit Kalantri
43. “It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.”― Zora Neale Hurston
44. “It’s dreadful what little things lead people to misunderstand each other.” – L. M. Montgomery
45. “It’s extraordinary, the amount of misunderstandings there are even between two people who discuss a thing quite often – both of them assuming different things and neither of them discovering the discrepancy.” -Agatha Christie
46. “It’s remarkable the logic we’ll build around a misapprehension.” -Sloane Crosley
47. “It’s very important to choose our words very carefully because miscommunication leads to misunderstanding, which rarely leads to anything good.” -Charles F. Glassman
48. “It’s dreadful what little things lead people to misunderstand each other.”― L.M. Montgomery
49. “Let us not harm ourselves just because you don’t understand me and I don’t understand you! Let us miss misunderstanding, and we shall surely see that understanding!” – Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
50. “Love is a strange and inexplicable mix of comprehension and misunderstanding.” –Unknown
51. “Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.” – Jack London
52. “Misunderstanding is like a tumor. If you don’t take care of it, it will grow bigger and bigger.” –Unknown
53. “Misunderstanding leads to more misunderstanding, as success leads to more success.” –Girdhar Joshi
54. “Misunderstanding must be nakedly exposed before true understanding can begin to flourish.” – Philip Yancey
55. “Misunderstanding of probability may be the greatest of all impediments to scientific literacy.” – Stephen Jay Gould
56. “Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than malice and wickedness.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
57. “Misunderstandings, if left unsolved, will push people so apart that they might never come together again.” –Unknown
58. “Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, “What else could this mean?” -Shannon L. Alder
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59. “Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding.” -L.M. Montgomery
60. “Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
61. “Never choose anyone without complete understanding and never lose anyone because of a small misunderstanding.” –Unknown
62. “Never judge a book by its cover. At first glance, even Jesus appeared unimpressive.” – Andrena Sawyer
63. “Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.” –Unknown
64. “No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.” – Stephen Fry
65. “No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.” – Johann Wolfgang
66. “Not judging people is the fastest way to peace.” – Jonathan Jackson
67. “Nothing hurts a good soul and the kind heart more than to live amongst people who can’t understand it.” – Ali lbn Abi Talib
68. “Nothing is easier than for two people in love to misunderstand each other.” -Marty Rubin
69. “One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own nasty way.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
70. “People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.” – Albert Camus
71. “People will misinterpret you and what you do. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored – the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.” – Austin Kleon
72. “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” -George Orwell
73. “Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.” -Sylvia Plath
74. “Rather than critique people, try admiring God’s creative handiwork.” – Richelle E
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75. “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
76. “So many great ideas come out of a misunderstanding.” -Ryan Fleck
77. “Sometimes a person’s silence means “I’m tired of explaining to people who don’t even care to understand.”-Unknown
78. “Sometimes it takes a misunderstanding for you to truly understand where you stand with a person.”-Unknown
79. “Somewhere between love and hate lies confusion, misunderstanding, and desperate hope.” -Shannon L. Alder
80. “Study leads to the retention of concepts, and so the Way is entirely misunderstood.” – Huangbo Xiyun
81. “Texting is a brilliant way to miscommunicate how you feel and misinterpret what other people mean.” –Unknown
82. “The best conversations are with yourself. At least there’s no risk of a misunderstanding.”― Olga Tokarczuk
83. “The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.” -Unknown
84. “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
85. “The fear of being misunderstood is the beginning of mediocrity.” -Ogwo David Emenike
86. “The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society—and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding.” -William H. Whyte
87. “The greatest tragedy that can befall a poet is to be praised by being misunderstood.” – Pattiann Rogers
88. “The more you understand, the less you are understood by other people.” -Unknown
89. “The only thing for sure we know about communication is that we tend to get it wrong.” -Michael Ray Smith
90. “The same passions in man and woman nonetheless differ in tempo; hence man and woman do not cease misunderstanding one another.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
91. “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw
92. “The text has disappeared under the interpretation.”― Friedrich Nietzsche
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93. “The words of others are mistakes of our hearing, shipwrecks of our understanding. How confidently we believe OUR meanings of other people’s words.” -Fernando Pessoa
94. “The world only goes round by misunderstanding.” -Charles Baudelaire
95. “The worst distance between two people is misunderstanding.” -Unknown
96. “Then we are too proud to apologize and too stubborn to forgive.” -Mouloud Benzadi
97. “There are some people who could hear you speak a thousand words and still not understand you, and there are others who will understand without you even speaking a word.” –Unknown
98. “There is no communication that is so simple that it cannot be misunderstood.” -Luigina Sgarro
99. “They ended as all great passions do end – by a misunderstanding.” -Honore de Balzac
100. “They have the unique ability to listen to one story and understand another.” -Pandora Poikilos
101. “To be misunderstood can be the writer’s punishment for having disturbed the reader’s peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.” – Anatole Broyard
102. “To pray without expectation is to misunderstand the whole concept of prayer and relationship with God.” – Aiden Wilson Tozer
103. “Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings.” – Haruki Murakami
104. “Understanding is deeper than knowledge. There are many people who know us, but there are very few who understand us.” -Unknown
105. “Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.” – Elias Canetti
106. “We are infected by our own misunderstanding of how our own minds work.” – Kevin Kelly
107. “We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.” – Erica Jong
108. “We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings.” -Suzy Kassem
109. “We have misunderstood our confusion when we think there is an answer to it. The confusion is not a result of questions that are too hard, but rather a questioner who is disintegrating.” – Steven Harrison
110. “We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” -Rudyard Kipling
111. “What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?” – Søren Kierkegaard
112. “When we generalize and judge people quickly without taking ample time, we’ve chosen a shortcut. It’s superficial of us, and a lack of wisdom.” – Assegid Habtewold
113. “When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.” – Wayne Dyer
114. “With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.” – G.K. Chesterton
115. “Words are the source of misunderstandings.” – Antoine de Saint
116. “You always risk people misunderstanding you when you say anything.” -Phil Lord
117. “You know people. Most of them don’t hear anything. Those who hear – don’t listen. A few who listen – don’t understand. And those who could understand… they don’t care.” -Bernard Werber
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