Interpretation Quotes

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. (Susan Sontag)
All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation. View quote
George Eliot
The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. View quote
Sigmund Freud
I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose. View quote
Charlie Chaplin
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. View quote
Friedrich Nietzsche
Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us? View quote
Lawrence Durrell
I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of "work," because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep. View quote
Andy Warhol
The interpretation of a case is corroborated only by the successful continuation of a self-formative process, that is by the completion of self-reflection, and not in any unmistakable way by what the patient says or how he behaves. View quote
Jürgen Habermas
Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation. View quote
Noam Chomsky
Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening. View quote
Henning Mankell
Militarism is basically a way of thinking, a certain interpretation of the function of the state; this manner of thinking is, moreover, revealed by its outer forms: by armaments and state organization. (Christian Lous Lange)
Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme. View quote
Charles Hartshorne
I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song. View quote
Charles Hartshorne
Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis--that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it. View quote
Antonin Scalia
Whoever removes the Cross and its interpretation by the New Testament from the center, in order to replace it, for example, with the social commitment of Jesus to the oppressed as a new center, no longer stands in continuity with the apostolic faith. View quote
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation. View quote
Marcus Aurelius
The nineteenth century, utilitarian throughout, set up a utilitarian interpretation of the phenomenon of life which has come down to us and may still be considered as the commonplace of everyday thinking. ... An innate blindness seems to have closed the eyes of this epoch to all but those facts which show life as a phenomenon of utility. View quote
José Ortega y Gasset
Pictures are the idea in visual or pictorial form; and the idea has to be legible, both in the individual picture and in the collective context - which presupposes, of course, that words are used to convey information about the idea and the context. However, none of this means that pictures function as illustrations of an idea: ultimately, they are the idea. Nor is the verbal formulation of the idea a translation of the visual: it simply bears a certain resemblance to the meaning of the idea. It is an interpretation, literally a reflection. View quote
Gerhard Richter
You've often heard me say – perhaps too often – that poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says and it says what it means, nothing less but nothing more. View quote
Robert Frost
Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
When Nietzsche praises egoism it is always in an aggressive or polemical way, against the virtues, against the virtue of disinterestedness (Z III "Of the three evil things”). But in fact egoism is a bad interpretation of the will, just as atomism is a bad interpretation of force. In order for there to be egoism it is necessary for there to be an ego. (Gilles Deleuze)
It is always possible to argue against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them and to seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach. View quote
Paul Ricœur
The logos of creation, 'And God Said...' formed the basis of Christian interpretation of the 'Book of Nature. View quote
Marshall McLuhan
If I were forced to sum up in one sentence what the Copenhagen interpretation says to me, it would be 'Shut up and calculate! View quote
David Mermin
Some devout Christians are among the most fervent advocates of the death penalty, contradicting Jesus Christ and justifying their belief on an erroneous interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," their most likely response, overlooks the fact that this was promulgated by Moses as a limitation- a prohibition against taking both eyes or all of an offender's teeth in retribution. View quote
Jimmy Carter