Quotes About Interpretation

Reality changes words far more than words can ever change reality.

Words lose their meaning when you look at them too long. 'God.' 'Science.' Meaning.

Sometimes an owl is just an owl.

Maybe there's no such thing as the truth. Maybe it's all just a point of view,

An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper. —KAHLIL GIBRAN, POET AND PHILOSOPHER

What people say and do in the most innocent situations can speak volumes about their real selves.

Metaphors are lies.

The book of Revelation is filled with symbols, yet these symbols refer to things that are literal. They have literal referents (see, for example, the explanation that appears in Revelation 1:20).

The idealist view has no interpretive anchor that helps hold Revelation together. This view is extremely reader-centered and not tied to the original meaning of the text.

Idealism is not a reliable guide to the meaning of Revelation.

Futurists interpret Revelation 4–22 as describing real people and events yet to appear on the world scene.

Step two of properly interpreting a symbol in Revelation is to recognize that all the symbols in the book are explained either in Revelation itself or in other parts of the Bible.

whatever is not thus explained is to be taken as literal.

Some people say that I talk too fast, but I think it's just that they listen too slowly.

The music just tends to be a vehicle for that poetry.

Collecting data using improper methods can spoil any statistical analysis

Discerning when and how these commands apply to us involves discerning the heart of God behind the text.

American slaves and their descendants have taken the texts of the bible in every sense of the word: embraced them, endured them, seized them, stolen them, caught them and captured them. Allen Dwight Callahan, The Talking Book

So where does the name Adam's apple come from? Most people say that it is from the notion that this bump was caused by the forbidden fruit getting stuck in the throat of Adam in the Garden of Eden. There is a problem with this theory because some Hebrew scholars believe that the forbidden fruit was the pomegranate. The Koran claims that the forbidden fruit was a banana. So take your pick---Adam's apple, Adam's pomegranate, Adam's banana. Eve clearly chewed before swallowing.

Universal histories teach us more about the historical crises that inspire them than they do about the civilizations they describe.

If you have to translate code to statements to understand it, it should probably be statements in the first place.

He shows, however accidentally, that the devices and conventions we have learned to respond to do not necessarily solve or even do anything. More than any artist I can think of, Wiseau proves Northrop Frye's belief that all conventions are, at heart, insane.

prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see. The

A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.