Misunderstood quotes
233 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside misunderstood — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The wettest, weirdest environment is human interaction. Whatever we build gets misunderstood, corroded and chronic, and it happens quickly and in unpredictable ways. That's one reason why the web is so fascinating-it's a collision between the analytic world of code and wet world of people."
"I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men."
"Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act."
"I can be vilified. I can be misunderstood. I didn't come here to be liked. I came here to make a difference."
"The idea of Dumbledore's corpse frightened Harry much less than the possibility that he might have misunderstood the living Dumbledore's intentions."
"I think a lot of people misunderstand what I'm doing, because my films are not easy sometimes. They do deserve a second viewing. I think they get misunderstood easily."
"Tex Cobb would call me every day after we fought, I got sick of talking to him. I liked him a lot as a fighter, and as a person, and feel that sometimes he was misunderstood."
"I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood."
"I live constantly in the fear of not being misunderstood."
"He is fond of being misunderstood. It gives him a post of vantage."
"Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood."
"I think I'm misunderstood when I post these comments about films. So here is Kate Winslet sitting on - you know, laying on this plank. This ship is down. She let her boyfriend drown. They didn't even try a second time to get him to float on that with her. So I'm angry by that. I think..."
"It is also the fate of leadership to be misunderstood. For historians, academics, writers and journalists to reflect great lives according to their own subjective canon."
"I find that socialism is often misunderstood by its least intelligent supporters and opponents to mean simply unrestrained indulgence of our natural propensity to heave bricks at respectable persons."
"In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood."
"Records can be destroyed if they do not suit the prejudices of ruling cliques, lost if they become incomprehensible, distorted if a copyist wishes to impose a new meaning upon them, misunderstood if we lack the information to interpret them. The past is like a huge library, mostly fiction."
"As a general rule, do not kick the shins of the opposite gentleman under the table, if personally unaquainted with him; your pleasantry is liable to be misunderstood--a circumstance at all times unpleasant."
"Nobody is ever misunderstood at a fireside; he may only be disagreed with."
"I was sitting cross-legged in bed, trying without success to pretend I'd misunderstood the image I'd glimpsed. Yeah, right. Because Vlad had been between my legs looking for a set of keys he'd lost."
"You cannot explain to someone who comes with no idea of what you are talking about without being misunderstood."
