Quotes About Misinterpretation

If "OK" meant that "it's all right to get up now," it makes sense that Pip would respond when she heard it. So if your dog Chief can pick the word sit out of the middle of a sentence, what is he to make of "Good sit" after he already sat? With Pip I got caught up in using words as if I were talking to a human, and I think other owners replicate that mistake often.1

Mostly they just confused us with skinwalkers. Since walkers and skinwalkers are both Native American shapeshifters, I can sort of understand it. Especially since I'm pretty sure the walker label came from some dumb white person who couldn't tell the difference.

Lord Daner isn't my boyfriend," Eleret said, annoyed. She'd let it go by once, but after two mentions, she had to correct him. Karvonen would drive her crazy if he kept referring to Daner that way. "Huh." Karvonen pursed his lips skeptically. "I'll bet it's not because he didn't try." "You'd lose." "Then Daner's an idiot," Karvonen said with feeling.

By and large, people are not that sensitive. People just imagine that they are, especially around certain topics.

If you're too specific, people will purposely mishear you so they can be outraged about whatever thing that usually outrages them.

It was about the hysteria, the mythmaking, and the misunderstanding that had twisted

When a man gives you a rose what you see may not be what he intends. You may think he sees you as delicate or frail. Perhaps you dislike a suitor who considers you sweet and nothing else. Perhaps the stem is thorn, and you assume he thinks you likely to hurt a hand too quick to touch. But if he trims the thorns you might think he has no liking for a thing that can defend itself with sharpness. There's so many ways a thing can be interpreted.

I do not understand this man," [Tempi] said. "Is he attempting to buy sex with me? Or does he wish to fight?

Someone's parents," he said, "have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.

When a man gives you a rose what you see may not be what he intends. You may think he sees you as delicate or frail. Perhaps you dislike a suitor who considers you all sweet and nothing else. Perhaps the stem is thorned, and you assume he thinks you likely to hurt a hand too quick to touch. But if he trims the thorns you might think he has no liking for a thing that can defend itself with sharpness.

You people are easily confused by the look of things.

I do not understand this man," he said. "Is he attempting to buy sex with me? Or does he wish to fight?

It often happens that things are other than what they seem, and you can get yourself into trouble by jumping to conclusions.

je sais avec quelle facilité les perceptions peuvent être déformées par un seul mot glissé dans la mauvaise oreille.

Words do not necessarily work, it is possible for them to obscure the things they are trying to say.

These are treacherous times, and I know how easily perceptions can be twisted by a single word spoken into the wrong ear. Impugn a man's character, and everything that man does is made to seem underhanded, suspect, fraught with double motives.

Paul Rozin's discoveries that people often refuse to drink soup from a brand-new bedpan, eat fudge shaped like feces, or put an empty gun to their head and pull the trigger. As Tamar Gendler points out, the mind works on two tracks. We know, consciously, that the bedpan is clean, the fudge is fudge, the gun is empty, and yet we can't help blurring the imagined and reality; our minds scream, "Dangerous object! Stay away!

Misinterpreting is not the only route by which someone may believe his or her false account is true.

That's the fallacy. Just because X happens and then Y happens, it doesn't mean that X caused Y.

When the mouth opens All are wrong.

But sometimes the strong mistake their strength

Listen to all the conversations of our world, between nations as well as between individuals. They are, for the most part, dialogues of the deaf.

The multitude is always in the wrong.

Astrology is a cousin of racism.