Quotes About Interpretation

a writing in the sand which all may read but few understand." - Philip Jose Farmer in 'Riders of the Purple Wage

books are a load of crap

to distinguish cases, and by their interpretation they can develop a substantial body of case law. In interpreting acts of Parliament, they traditionally have assumed Parliament to have meant what, on the face of it, the words of an act appear to mean. However, following a decision of the House of Lords (in its judicial capacity) in 1992, it is now possible for courts, where they consider it necessary, to look at the proceedings of Parliament in order to determine what Parliament really meant

Generally included under the generic heading of common law is the judicial interpretation of statute law.

the Constitution. As in the United States, statute and common law are subject to judicial interpretation, but there is no power of judicial review, at least not as the term is understood in the United States. The courts can influence and to some extent mold certain provisions through their interpretation of statute and common law. Indeed, their use of common

history is our attempt to reconstruct the past from the evidence that remains

What actually happened in the past is gone- history is our attempt to reconstruct the past from the evidence that remains.

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.

That's the trouble with a story spinner. You never know what's real and what's made up. Even when they are telling the truth, they can't stop themselves from spinning it into something better; something prettier, with more of a pattern to it.

He smiled faintly, like somebody who had never seen a smile, but had read a book on how to do it.

A deconstructed text is tantamount to a forgery.

The radio was playing "Easter Parade" and I thought, But this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin "Easter Parade" and "White Christmas."… Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow.

Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

The closest we can come to the truth about reality is in the fictions that we create about it.

Undermining experience, embellishing experience, rearranging and enlarging experience into a species of mythology.

The duty of the historian is not to make the facts, but to discover them, and then to construct his theory wide enough to give them all comfortable room.

It is wise to take admissions of uncertainty seriously," Daniel Kahneman noted, "but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true."17

statisticians sleeping with their feet in an oven and their head in a freezer because the average temperature is comfortable.

It's a rare day when a journalist says, "The market rose today for any one of a hundred different reasons, or a mix of them, so no one knows.

Reading contemporary accounts brings home the fact that of any battle or campaign there are at least for different versions. One is that of those who fought in it, two is of the generals who commanded it, three is of those who reported on it at the time and made what they could of a mass of confused and often misleading information, and four is the version of those who had a theory about it and reported those facts which happened to fit the version they were trying to portray.

But you don't know how to read anymore! When you open a book, you do it in the faith and assurances that you are already master of what it contains and that the author has written only so you may prove him wrong!

Religion in art was a subtle business, best handled indirectly.

Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.

A translator must, of course, be an interpreter of cultures.