75 Best Quotes About Misunderstanding That Are Truly Inspirational

Misunderstanding is a common phenomenon in this world — whether it is on love, friendship, or work. This is because there is a certain level of understanding that comes with every person.

Best Quotes About Misunderstanding

These 75 inspirational quotes about misunderstanding can encourage you to seek resolution during times of fights and disagreements with people you interact with every day.

1. “Miscommunication leads to misunderstanding, which rarely leads to anything good.” — Charles F. Glassman

2. “Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.” — Dream Hampton

3. “If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.” — Zora Neale Hurston

4. “Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.” — Albert Schweitzer

5. “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

6. “Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.” — Lionel Trilling

7. “In human intercourse, the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.” — Henry David Thoreau

8. “We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” — Rudyard Kipling

9. “The overall purpose of human communication is – or should be – reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one from another.” — M. Scott Peck

10. “Love is a misunderstanding between two fools.” — Oscar Wilde

11. “In the whole round of human affairs little is so fatal to peace as misunderstanding.” — Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

12. “We are infected by our own misunderstanding of how our own minds work.” — Kevin Kelly

13. “It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.” — Charles Baudelaire

14. “A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding.” — Bob Dylan

15. “The world only goes round by misunderstanding.” — Charles Baudelaire

16. “The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

17. “Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?” — Phillip Roth

18. “The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.” — Simone de Beauvoir

19. “I think there was a misunderstanding about what yesterday’s meeting was all about, and we had one idea of what we were coming for and they had another. And we got off on a bad foot, but we’re gonna continue to meet tomorrow and move forward.” — Jeff Friedman

20. “How often, you wonder, has the direction of your life been shaped by such misunderstandings? How many opportunities have you been denied–or, for that matter, awarded–because someone failed to see you properly? How many friends have you lost, how many have you gained, because they glimpsed some element of your personality that shone through for only an instant, and in circumstances, you could never reproduce? An illusion of water shimmering at the far bend of a highway.” — Kevin Brockmeier

21. “It may be added, to prevent misunderstanding, that when I speak of contemplated objects in this last phrase as objects of contemplation, the act of contemplation itself is, of course, an enjoyment.” — Samuel Alexander

22. “Friendship must never be buried under the weight of misunderstanding.” — Unknown

23. “But let there be no misunderstanding. The war against terror is every bit as important as our fight against fascism in World War II. Or our struggle against the spread of Communism during the Cold War.” — Jim Bunning

24. “I know that when people pull apart, they usually employ misunderstanding as a weapon, deliberately getting hold of the stick’s wrong end, impaling themselves on its point in order to prove the perfidy of the other.” — Salman Rushdie

25. “Don’t make friends before understanding and don’t break friendship after misunderstanding.” — Unknown

26. “Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.” — Diane Arbus

27. “A beautiful relationship does not depend on how well we understand someone. But it depends on how well we avoid the misunderstanding.” — Unknown

28. “Never apologize to others for their misunderstanding of who you are.” — Unknown

29. “There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave.” — Louis Kronenberger

30. “It’s dreadful what little things lead people to misunderstand each other.” — L. M. Montgomery

31. “Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.” — John Lennon

32. “The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.” — Franz Kafka

33. “It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.” — Anatole France

34. “I do believe that simple things really matter because even a simple misunderstanding can ruin everything.” — Unknown

35. “Our problems, all come from nothing; they are all based on a misunderstanding that does not even exist.” — Sogyal Rinpoche

36. “Clear up any misunderstanding before it gets to that point.” — Joel Miller

37. “Much of aging comes from a misunderstanding of the effect of comfort.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

38. “If you don’t clear your misunderstanding in time they become the reason for distance forever.” — Unknown

39. “When nails grow long, we cut nails not fingers. Similarly when misunderstanding grows up, cut your ego, not your relationship.” — Unknown

40. “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

41. “The greatest distance between two people is a misunderstanding.” — Unknown

42. “When there’s a misunderstanding, one must make a compromise. This word is not a bad word.” — Nicolas Sarkozy

43. “The misunderstanding of truth does not destroy the truth.” — Vissarion Belinsky

44. “The notion of implied meaning is the root of misunderstanding.” — Eric Parslow

45. “Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.” — Andre Gide

46. “You always risk people misunderstanding you when you say anything.” — Phil Lord

47. “Change comes with both fear and some pain. Those two ingredients create mistrust, misunderstanding and misinformation. Such is the process of democracy.” — David Mixner

48. “I have been misunderstood perhaps more than anyone else ever, but it has not affected me, for the simple reason that there is no desire to be understood. It is their problem if they don’t understand, it is not my problem. If they misunderstand, it is their problem and their misery. I am not going to waste my sleep because millions of people are misunderstanding me.” — Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

49. “They ended as all great passions do end—by a misunderstanding.” — Honore de Balzac

50. “We can rarely see things from the point of view of another person because we look at the facts through the screen of an impression or an interest which distorts our view; and then there are accusations, quarrels and misunderstanding.” — Barry Long

51. “They have the unique ability to listen to one story and understand another.” — Unknown

52. “No matter how carefully you choose your words, they’ll always end up being twisted by others.” — Unknown

53. “Five minutes of communication can save a year’s worth of turmoil and misunderstanding.” — Joyce Meyer

54. “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” — George Bernard Shaw

55. “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

56. “Language is the source of misunderstandings.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

57. “There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.” — William James

58. “Because we can’t communicate, there’s a lot of misunderstanding.” — Chen Shui Bian

59. “Some misunderstandings are hard to cure.” — Barton Gellman

60. “A lot of people misunderstand me. That’s because they don’t know me at all.” — Michael Jackson

61. “We’re all born with selfish desires, so we can all relate to those feelings in others. But kindness is something made individually by each person… so it’s easy to misunderstand when others are trying to be kind to you.” — Natsuki Takaya

62. “The text has disappeared under the interpretation.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

63. “Looking but not seeing is the hearing but not understanding of the eye.” — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

64. “No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.” — Stephen Fry

65. “Be not disturbed at being misunderstood; be disturbed rather at not being understanding.” — Chinese Proverbs

66. “I’m only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand.” — Unknown

67. “It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.” — Kerl Popper

68. “Being misunderstood doesn’t mean you’re the issue… sometimes it’s the people that misunderstand you with all the issues.” — Unknown

69. “People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.” — Soren Kierkegaard

70. “We feel understood by people who like us; misunderstood by people who don’t — and those feelings are probably realistic.” — Hugh Prather

71. “Nowadays, saying what you really think can be a serious error since one risks being misunderstood.” — Oscar Wilde

72. “So long as you live and work, you will be misunderstood; to that you must resign yourself once and for all. Be silent!” — Johan Wolfgang von Goethe

73. “You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate.” — Edie Sedgwick

74. “The ocean gets its saltiness from the tears of misunderstood sharks.” — Unknown

75. “An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

Final Thoughts

A human misunderstanding other humans is proof that we humans are unique and different from each other.

Misunderstandings are not important. What’s more important is what we do about our misunderstandings and how we resolve it with the people we care about and love in order to stop conflicts and make our relationship with them stronger.