Quotes About Interpretation

You never know if he's being ironic or dyslexic.

We all see what we want to see.

Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it.

The maximum value of art is that it allows the artist to express himself.

As he went about to the other workrooms he realised that every painting was a self-portrait even when it was a still life or a scene over the roofs of Paris; for no man ever pictured anything but himself, his core, the things that he was basically. With every brush stroke the artist was mercilessly exposed: he could not conceal nothing, he could pretend to be another person, to believe in other values, but in the end he would fool no one.

Do you call yourself an artist?" "Yes." "How absurd. You never sold a picture in your life." "Is that what being an artist means—selling? I thought it meant one who was always seeking without absolutely finding. I thought it means the contrary from 'I know it, I have found it.' When I say I am an artist, I only mean

Art has a magic quality: the more minds that digest it, the longer it lives.

Scriitorul È™i pictorul folosesc mijloace diferite, proprii artei fiec?ruia, dar exprim? acelaÈ™i gând.

Puterea oamenilor seam?n? foarte mult cu desenul. Întreaga perspectiv? se modific? o dat? cu schimbarea unghiului de vedere, È™i asta nu depinde de subiect, ci de cel care priveÈ™te.

The robot had no feelings, only positronic surges that mimicked those feelings. (And perhaps human beings had no feelings, only neuronic surges that were interpreted as feelings.)

What lasts in the reader's mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what's it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.

people live and die by nonsense. It's not what is so much as what people think is.

Historians pick and choose and every one of them picks and chooses the same thing.

Your phraseology is obscure, but I think I understand.

There is nothing straight about you; no motive that hasn't another behind it; no statement that hasn't three meanings.

Where history concerns mainly personalities, the drawings become either black or white according to the interests of the writer.

His idiot face gets redder and his eyes bulge and his ears block. I'd say his mind stops functioning, but I lack the proof of any other state from which it might stop." Bronowski

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that 'right' and 'wrong' are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

There was something I tried to put in, Gottstein, but between my not knowing how to phrase it and Earth's reluctance to grasp my meaning, we ended up not communicating.

Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.

how much is 2+2? Suppose Joseph says: 2+2 = purple, while Maxwell says: 2+2 = 17. Both are wrong but isn't it fair to say that Joseph is wronger than Maxwell? Suppose you said: 2+2=an integer. You'd be right, wouldn't you? Or suppose you said: 2+2=an even integer. You'd be rather righter. Or suppose you said:2+2=3.999. Wouldn't you be nearly right?

no human mind has created those equations directly. We have merely spent decades programming more powerful computers and they have devised and stored the equations, but, of course, we don't know if they are valid and have meaning. It depends entirely on how valid and meaningful the programming is in the first place.

The creation tale of Genesis is very impressive, even in modern terms, if it is treated symbolically and allegorically. But again, the tendency for many people is to accept it literally and to fight ferociously against deviating from it by one iota.

Where history concerns mainly personalities, the drawings become either black or white according to the interests of the writer. I find it all remarkably useless.