Quotes & Sayings About Interpretation

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution. — Ansel Adams

The view of the "any-minute-now" rapture of the saints together with the belief that some time after that event Christ will return again to usher in a thousand-year po-litical kingdom, thereby fulfilling his promises to David, is the product of a method of interpretation known as dispensationalism. This construction is entirely unique to dispensationalism. No other system teaches this view. — Duane Garner

All readings are also mis-readings, re-readings, partial readings, imposed readings, and imagined readings of a text that is originally and finally never simply there. Just as the world is originally fallen apart, the text is always already enmeshed in contending practices and hopes. — Donna J. Haraway

The universe is like a river. The river keeps on flowing. It doesn't care whether you are happy or sad, good or bad; it just keeps flowing. Some people go down to the river and they cry. Some people go down to the river and they are happy, but the river doesn't care; it just keeps flowing. We can use it and enjoy it, or we can jump in and drown. The river just keeps flowing because it is impersonal, and so it is with the universe. The universe that we live in can support us or destroy us. It's our interpretation and use of the laws that determine our effects or results. — Robert Anthony

How she listened, the first time, to the sonorous lamentations of romantic melancholia echoing out across heaven and earth! If her childhood had been spent in the dark back-room of a shop in some town, she would now perhaps have been kindled by the lyric surgings of nature which only normally reach us as through the interpretation of a writer. — Gustave Flaubert

Social and cultural history is often comprised of whatever diaries and letters remain and that is down to chance and wide open to interpretation. — Sara Sheridan

I suppose this is your way of telling me that you are outrageously happy?'
Quill nodded. 'Of course.'
'Living with you is an act of interpretation, do you know that?'
'Living with you is ... bliss. Did you know that? — Eloisa James

The world is a
progressively realized community of interpretation. — Josiah Royce

Everything is determined by your interpretation of what happens. You can change the meaning of what happens through your perception of events or memories. — Steven Redhead

So much of how we see the world is a matter of interpretation. A matter of wishing and wanting and hoping rather than really deep-down believing. — Emily Giffin

The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth-the power of love-although I have put it last, is the rarest. — Margot Asquith

Shy" was the sympathetic interpretation she got from older people. "Snotty" was the interpretation she got from people her own age. — Ann Brashares

The chief aim of Interpretation is not instruction, but provocation. — Freeman Tilden

I also think within the scene, a specific scene - if I were to play a part that I played 10 years ago now, my interpretation of that scene would be totally different. I would be making different choices. Because I can't somehow subtract all of the experiences that I've had in my life. And it's fascinating to see, because somewhere I'm very reflective in that. You know, I've been playing basically actually close to 40 years old, so I'm somewhere lost in age in this movie. But it's been fascinating to see that I can't subtract that time. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Love, he told himself, was open to interpretation like any other abstract indulgence but followed the same principles everywhere, irrespective of everything else. One, either won or lost in love, there was no bridge in between, and he decided he had lost, lost to himself, if not to her. — Faraaz Kazi

He glanced helplessly at Ruby, hoping for some help. She was a scribe and had more experience with dwarves than the six hours that Durham had acquired. He's assumed that, as a fellow human, she would make an effort to be some sort of cultural ambassador to help him survive past lunch. Ruby's current interpretation of being helpful seemed to be a silent smirk. — Jeffery Russell

Why, if all the creatures in the world gathered together to make a single gnat and put a soul into it, they would not succeed!' No more than man can make a gnat can demons, according to another tradition, make anything smaller than a grain of barley. But those who favored the thaumaturgic interpretation of the Book of Yetsirah, and believed that a man or golem could be created with its help,...." Idea of the Golem p. 171 — Gershom Scholem

If we assume, however, that the desire to achieve optimal experience is the foremost goal of every human being, the difficulties of interpretation raised by cultural relativism become less severe. Each social system can then be evaluated in terms of how much psychic entropy it causes, measuring that disorder not with reference to the ideal order of one or another belief system, but with reference to the goals of the members of that society. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The reason I often say, for me, photography is analogous to poetry, for my kind of work more so than journalism, is because it's so open to interpretation. And I'm very happy having different interpretations of it. — Alec Soth

If you have an image of someone cutting off a relationship, it's the cutting off that will lead to your suffering. If you see the action as their need being expressed, then the message is within them, not you. Any interpretation you put onto another person's message (such as passive-aggressive, withholding, etc.), you will pay for because of how you took it. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Art, to me, is the interpretation of the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain. — Childe Hassam

Look to the past to help create the future. Look to science and to poetry. Combine innovation and interpretation. We need the best of both. And it is universities that best provide them. — Drew Gilpin Faust

The difference between eccentricity and originality in historical studies is often difficult to detect at first encounter. When a radically new interpretation of a large segment of history makes its appearance, time is needed to sift the evidence. — Edmund Morgan

The new Constitution will promote the "general" welfare, not welfare varying by condition or by place of residence. It will secure our liberties - against whom? There's an ambiguity here; liberty could be secured against foreign enemies and domestic subversives, or against the new government itself. The latter interpretation is soothing to American ears; but in this context, it seems far-fetched. The clause appears in a list of things government is to do, not things it is not to do; a list of powers, not of prohibitions. The new government, it would appear, is not the enemy of liberty but its chief agent and protector. The purpose then, in its most plausible reading, is to create a strong, active, national government, one whose benefits will flow directly to the people who create it. — Garrett Epps

Christianity and Judaism are united above all in their common affirmation and implementation of the moral teaching of the Hebrew Bible, or 'Old Testament,' and the traditions of interpretation of that teaching. — David Novak

Music, and art for that matter, to me is not about true meaning to anyone else but yourself. If I told you the meaning of it all from my point of view it would erase the intimacy of art. I feel like art is up for interpretation, so if I told you my meaning, how could you truly relate it to anything that "you" personally are going through?? That is the beauty of art and music in particular — John O'Callaghan

The text has disappeared under the interpretation. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If commas are open to interpretation, hyphens are downright Delphic. — Mary Norris

Arguments over Scriptures held the same power and importance as the way they dressed, the rituals they followed for prayer and for eating. All of this was intended to divide. To separate them from the rest. Either a person was part of their exclusive group or he was an outcast. Others might call themselves Judeans. They might consider themselves the Chosen, the followers of the One True God. But if politics or habits or interpretation of the Holy Book did not follow that of the Pharisees, they were doomed. — Janette Oke

It's not enough to identify the Superobjective intellectually; you have to justify it, to find the emotional drive behind it. You need your own specific interpretation of the superobjective so that every time you think of it, it makes you emotional and drives you into action. — Larry Moss

Shakespeare said it this way: Even the devil can cite scripture for his purpose. — Dawn Flemington

What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean? — Antonin Scalia

I practiced writing in every possible way that I could. I wrote a pastiche of other people. Just as a pianist runs his scales for ten years before he gives his concert: because when he gives that concert, he can't be thinking of his fingering or of his hands, he has to be thinking of his interpretation. He's thinking of what he's trying to communicate. — Katherine Anne Porter

There's a lovely freedom of will when you approach a character that no one has really come across before, because it is your own interpretation. — Rose Leslie

The way it works in commercials is they come to you with the script and then you do the visual, you do the storyboards, and you give your vision of it, but it's very much their baby. You just kind of put your polish and sheen on it, and you're interpretation of it, but it's very much the agency's idea. — Paul W. S. Anderson

In truth, nothing could be more opposed to the purely aesthetic interpretation and justification of the world which are taught in this book than the Christian teaching, which is, and wants to be, only moral and which relegates art, every art, to the realm of lies; with its absolute standards, beginning with the truthfulness of God, it negates, judges, and damns art. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Because I am an officer and a gentleman they have given me my notebooks, pen, ink and paper. So I write and wait. I am committed to no cause, I love no living person. The fact that I have no future except what you can count in hours doesn't seem to disturb me unduly. After all, the future whether here or there is equally unknown. So for the waiting days I have only the past to play about with. I can juggle with a series of possibly inaccurate memories, my own interpretation, for what is worth, of events. There is no place for speculation or hope, or even dreams. Strangely enough I think I like it like that. — Jennifer Johnston

The ascetic ideal has an aim - this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other interests of human life should, measured by its standard, appear petty and narrow; it explains epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end; it forbids any other interpretation, any other end; it — Friedrich Nietzsche

Tarot Reading is an art based on intuition, interpretation, and perception. — Nikita Dudani

There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul. — Edith Wharton

There seems to be a different Chicago around every street corner, behind every bar, and within every apartment, two-flat, cottage, or bungalow. City of immigrants or city of heartless plutocrats, say what you will, Chicago almost defies interpretation. In many ways Chicago is like a snake that sheds its skin every thirty years or so and puts on a new coat to conform to a new reality. — Dominic A. Pacyga

It is our interpretation of the past, our limiting beliefs, and our undigested pain that stop us from being able to move forward with clear direction. — Debbie Ford

To me, art almost always speaks more forcefully when it appears in an imperfect, accidental, and fragmentary way, somehow just signaling its presence, allowing one to feel it through the ineptitude of the interpretation. I prefer the Chopin that reaches me in the street from an open window to the Chopin served in great style from the concert stage. — Witold Gombrowicz

Look, I happen to agree with what George says about the interpretation of the New Testament, but I want to remind both of you to never play God. — Billy Graham

One of the risks of being quiet is that the other people can fill your silence with their own interpretation: You're bored. You're depressed. You're shy. You're stuck up. You're judgemental. When others can't read us, they write their own story - not always one we choose or that's true to who we are. — Sophia Dembling

The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it. — Flannery O'Connor

...an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, and interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling. A similar effect may account for the familiar fact that when someone turns his hobby into a business, he often loses pleasure in it. Likewise, an intellectual who pursues an academic career gets professionalized, and this may lead him to stop thinking. This line of reasoning suggests that the kind of appreciative attention where one remains focused on what one is doing can arise only in leisure activities. Such a conclusion would put pleasurable absorption beyond the ken of any activity that is undertaken for the sake of making money, because although money is undoubtedly good, it is not intrinsically so. — Matthew Crawford

When you dream, ask yourself about the energetic as well as the psychological messages. — Elaine Seiler

Shake yourself free from the manikin you create out of a false interpretation of what you do and what you feel, and you'll at once see that the manikin you make yourself is nothing at all like what you really are or what you really can be! — Luigi Pirandello

All appeals to Scripture are appeals to interpretations of Scripture. The only real question is: whose interpretation? People with differing interpretations of Scripture cannot set a Bible on a table and ask it to resolve their differences. In order for the Scripture to function as an authority, it must be read and interpreted by someone. According to "solo" Scriptura, that someone is each individual, so ultimately, there are as many final authorities as there are human interpreters. — Keith Mathison

I have a very connected history with Bilal. I heard his demo years ago. I heard all of the magic instantly. He's a master at interpretation of song. — Q-Tip

What then is the conclusion, brothers? Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, a teaching, a revelation, another language, or an interpretation. All things must be done for edification. 27 If any person speaks in another language, there should be only two, or at the most three, each in turn, and someone must interpret. 28 But if there is no interpreter, that person should keep silent in the church and speak to himself and to God. 29 — Anonymous

The intellect seeks to throw its own interpretation of the real over reality, and in so doing carves the world up into artificial little cubes. — James Rozoff

If this interpretation of nashamah by the rabbis is right ... then it is naming that creates soul. — Anne Hamilton

ACT9.36 Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did. — Anonymous

God's word to me - new every day - in the infinite riches of interpretation. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Only you know your circumstances, your energy level, the needs of your children, and the emotional demands of your other obligations. Be wise during intensive seasons of your life. Cherish your agency, and don't give it away casually. Don't compare yourself to others - nearly always this will make you despondent. Don't accept somebody else's interpretation of how you should be spending your time. Make the best decision you can and then evaluate it to see how it works. — Chieko N. Okazaki

If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine. — Diana Wynne Jones

Satanism advocates practicing a modified form of the Golden Rule. Our interpretation of this rule is: "Do unto others as they do unto you"; because if you "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and they, in turn, treat you badly, it goes against human nature to continue to treat them with consideration. You should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but if your courtesy is not returned, they should be treated with the wrath they deserve. — Anton Szandor LaVey

Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation. — Marcus Aurelius

live in an era of terrible preoccupation with presentation and interpretation, one in which the relations between who someone is and what he believes and how he "expresses himself" 70 have been thrown into big-time flux. — David Foster Wallace

Those who devote themselves to the study of Sacred Scripture should always remember that the various hermeneutical approaches have their own philosophical underpinnings, which need to be carefully evaluated before they are applied to the sacred texts. — Pope John Paul II

Here's how a child listens: you tell him something, and he puts his own interpretation on what you said. That's what he hears. No one has ever heard you. — Byron Katie

The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history. — Cornel West

Somewhere in the world there must be a cult of divination centered on the interpretation of cranial sutures, but he couldn't recall any from his Cultural Anthro classes. Papua New Guinea maybe. They were big into cranial curation there. — Scott Nicolay

If you want to experience a free-flowing discourse devoid of limitation, you need to seek the darkest fringes of the Internet (and none of that anonymous bile can bleed back into proper society, because the interpretation always ends up being worse than the original sentiment). — Chuck Klosterman

In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of the little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar. — Dr. John

Many people find that they frequently slip into negative, unproductive moods, and, once in these moods, it can be difficult to shift out of them. We suggest that this happens because most people have an interpretation of mood and emotion that limits their power to observe and change their moods. — Fernando Flores

Your life is a poetry, it just needs some interpretation. — Debasish Mridha

The meaning of a logically consistent mathematical statement is not subject to interpretation. — Edward Frenkel

Most importantly, I agree that the truth of these matters should be determined by interpretation of scientific evidence - experiments, fossil studies and the like. — Phillip E. Johnson

I try to make art which celebrates doubt and uncertainty. Which provokes answers but doesn't give them. Which withholds absolute meaning by incorporating parasite meanings. Which suspends meaning while perpetually dispatching you toward interpretation, urging you beyond dogmatism, beyond doctrine, beyond ideology, beyond authority. — Sherrie Levine

For me a work of art must be an elevated interpretation of nature. The search for the ideal has been the purpose of my life. In landscape or seascape, I love above all the poetic motif. — William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Don't make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. - MIGUEL ANGEL RUIZ It's better to take the time to ask questions and to find the words to say what you really feel. Often we leave so much room for interpretation either because we are rushing or because we are afraid to speak the whole truth, but this is where miscommunications start. So even if you aren't sure about what someone means or how they feel, just ask them. Goal: When was the last time you assumed something and were wrong? Make a point to know the truth and not assume it. — Demi Lovato

Unity is the only way in which the people of this country can overthrow the fascists, communists, capitalists, and all the other assholes who claim running a representative government is so difficult. The emphasis has been taken from the Bill of Rights and placed on the type of interpretation of the Constitution that best suits the people in power. — William Powell

I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio. — Kiri Te Kanawa

The reason Buddhism can be so naturalised is because, stripped of its supernatural elements, its core teachings can be giving a sound, secular philosophical interpretation. In other words, it becomes a religion acceptable to the contemporary, naturalistic mind only when it ceases to be a religion. — Julian Baggini

Good health is subjective and cumulative depending on individual interpretation. Do not allow someone else's shortcomings to become yours. — Gary Hopkins

NOTHING MAKES SENSE. Do not look for any sense in things. It is not there. It is you who ascribe it to what you live or get to know. A defeat or a victory is neither a message from the gods nor a trick of fate. Neither means anything - and, if they seem to, it is but an interpretation you yourself make of them - , inasmuch as things in themselves are only indifference and silence. So, do not waste your precious time in looking for signs everywhere around you. Try and interpret happenings, those which bleed and those which make you smile, as maturing experiences. Oh, yes, what is most important: live! — Camilo Gomes Jr.

Culture as art is the peak expression of man's creativity, his capacity to break out of nature's narrow bounds, and hence out of the degrading interpretation of man in modern natural and political science. — Allan Bloom

Appearance gives rise to interpretation Interpretation gives rise to comparison Comparison gives rise to preference Preference gives rise to disappointment — Ramon Bachty

The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye. — Charlotte Bronte

Thus when an interpretation of the world, an ideology, for example, claims to explain everything, one thing remains inexplicable, namely, the interpretive system itself. And with that, every claim to completeness and finality fails. — Paul Watzlawick

Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. This again is due to the ignorance of those concerned, not so much in their own, as in their mutual fields. The peril of a clash is aggravated by a more or less predominant sense of combativeness, posed by every human being. To resist this inherent fighting tendency the best way is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse. — Nikola Tesla

Now, go knock 'em dead."
I assume he means that I should make a good impression at the party, and not to follow the literal interpretation of that expression. — Bree Despain

We see, not change of aspect, but change of interpretation. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

My favorite Galaxie 500 album is the first one, 'Today,' recorded in three days at Noise New York and produced by Kramer. It contains my favorite Galaxie 500 songs: 'Temperature's Rising,' 'Tugboat,' and our interpretation of Jonathan Richman's 'Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste.' — Dean Wareham

I do not document anything, I give an interpretation. — Andre Kertesz

The most terrible fight is not when there is one opinion against another, the most terrible is when two men say the same thing
and fight about the interpretation, and this interpretation involves a difference of quality. — Soren Kierkegaard

The method of political science is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions. — Woodrow Wilson

Interpretation blocks reception while masquerading as reception. Rightness does not need interpretation; it requires simple acceptance and nothing else. — Vernon Howard

Stories continue in all directions to include even the retelling of the stories themselves, as legend is informed by interpretation, and interpretation is informed by time. — Garth Stein

In the deepest sense, the Bible is not meant to be interpreted, but rather revealed! — Eli Of Kittim

Not getting our needs fulfilled is painful - but it's a sweet pain, not suffering, which is what comes from life-alienated thinking and interpretation. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

If for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. — Richard Hofstadter

Hard floorings such as marble, wood, terrazzo and linoleum, have become fashionable of late, but I believe they create a characterless "international" style that is as opposed to interpretation as it is repellent to the foot. — George Pendle

A person finds it distasteful to hear his life recounted with a different interpretation from his own. — Milan Kundera

The Romans may be known for many things, but humor isn't one of them. As usual, this interpretation relies on a prima facie reading of Jesus as a man with no political ambitions whatsoever. That is nonsense. All criminals sentenced to execution received a titulus so that everyone know the crime for which they were being punished and thus be deterred from taking part in similar activity. That the wording on Jesus's titulus was likely genuine is demonstrated by Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, who notes that "if [the titulus] were invented by Christians, they would have used Christos, for early Christians would scarcely have called their Lord 'King of the Jews'."[..] the notion that a no-name Jewish peasant would have received a personal audience with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who had probably signed a dozen execution orders that day alone, is so outlandish that it cannot be taken seriously. — Reza Aslan

With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he's so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that's not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, "What the hell do you mean by that?" And he said, "He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn't understand me; you're an idiot.' That's the terrorism part." And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes. — John Rogers Searle

The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it. The model is constructed by associations that link ideas of circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes that co-occur with some regularity, either at the same time or within a relatively short interval. As these links are formed and strengthened, the pattern of associated ideas comes to represent the structure of events in your life, and it determines your interpretation of the present as well as your expectations of the future. — Daniel Kahneman