Sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere, non lugare, neque detestari, sed intelligere. I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

-Spinoza, Baruch also known as Benedict de Spinoza
  TractatusTheologico-Politicus, bk.1, pt.4.

They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

-Trollope, Anthony
  OfTrevelyan's paranoia about his wife's fidelity. HeKnew He Was Right, ch.38.

Wenn ein L o« we sprechen k o« nnte, wir k o« nnten ihn nicht verstehen. If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

-Wittgenstein, LudwigJosef Johann
  Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations), pt.2, section11 (translated by G E M Anscombe).

Harold Ross†had a contempt for anything he didn't understand, which was practically everything.

-Woollcott, Alexander Humphreys
Quoted inJamesThurber TheYearsWith Ross (1959), ch.15.