Quotes About Interpretation

in 2000 the Supreme Court declared this law unconstitutional, stressing that Congress by statute cannot overrule the Court's interpretation of the Constitution.

Those who like to interpret historical facts symbolically may recognize in this the spirit of a specifically "modern" conception of the world which permits the subject to assert itself against the object as something independent and equal; whereas classical antiquity did not as yet permit the explicit formulation of this contrast; and whereas the Middle Ages believed the subject as well as the object to be submerged in a higher unity.

The real trouble is this: giving expression to thought by the observable medium of words is like the work of the silkworm. In being made into silk, the material achieves its value. But in the light of day it stiffens; it becomes something alien, no longer malleable. True, we can then more easily and freely recall the same thought, but perhaps we can never experience it again in its original freshness.

There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks

The task is ... not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times, which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It's therapy.

Freedom, Wash, is a word with different meanings to different people," he said, as though I did not know the truth of this better than he.

We did not understand each other's differing notions of property.

On the one hand we need the image of "the text" in order to focus on anything at all; on the other hand we use the metaphor of "reading" to signal that our apprehension of a text will always be partial, that we never quite reach the "text itself," a realization that has led certain critics to question the very existence of such an object.

You can't just trust to luck you have to really listen to what that character is telling you.

You get what you feel about what you think about.

Not everyone gets the same message from the same words - or the same results from the same books

we can misinterpret some of our perceptions of emotions, those visceral feelings—mistaking anger for guilt, love for hate.

Love is an exercise in selective perception

Writing is drawing, drawing is writing. Because it's the same gesture. They're close already.

My wife says I'd get philosophical with a lamp post if I thought the thing had ears.

If the scriptures had been written with one half of the care and ability with which they have been explained and defended, they would not have been the cause of so much contention and mischief, and they would not have stood in need of so much explanation and defense.

Within our twenty-first century modes of communication, truth can be easily manipulated and framed to get the viewer of the information to receive it in a predetermined way, to elicit a desired spin of "truth." Turning on the light doesn't guarantee the clarifying of confusion anymore. If all of the media of our societal experience make us believe that a rope is a snake, then a rope becomes a snake, either in darkness or the light of day.

Dis wat 'n mens Hollands kan maak. Hierdie water wat soos asem om jou is.

Indeed, what says more: the few lines of a tightly written poem or a volume of analytical comments on it? The communicative ability of artifacts depends on how the work of negotiating meaning is distributed between reification and participation.

My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it.

Ik geloof niet in objectieve vaststellingen. Oneindig samenspel van menselijke wisselwerkingen.

There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.

Painting is only a bridge linking the painter's mind with that of the viewer.