
“What if the chosen one misunderstands what he’s been chosen for?”
The Tain (p. 301)
Short Fiction, Looking for Jake (2005)
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China Miéville 102
English writer 1972Related quotes


“What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?”

"A Reply to Kenneth Tynan: The Playwright's Role" in The Observer (29 June 1958)
Context: I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstanding.
If I may be allowed to express myself paradoxically, I should say that the truest society, the authentic human community, is extra-social — a wider, deeper society, that which is revealed by our common anxieties, our desires, our secret nostalgias. The whole history of the world has been governed by nostalgias and anxieties, which political action does no more than reflect and interpret, very imperfectly. No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.

“No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.”
Bk. II, Ch. 4
Elective Affinities (1809)

Remarks in a press conference, after questions by Ken Walsh of U.S. News & World Report (11 October 2001), as published https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/pagedetails.action?collectionCode=PPP&browsePath=president-57%2F2001%2F02%3BA%3BJuly+1+to+December+31%2C+2001&granuleId=PPP-2001-book2-doc-pg1218-2&packageId=PPP-2001-book2&fromBrowse=true in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: 2001, Book II (2003), Government Printing Office, p. 1226-1227.
2000s, 2001
Context: I'm amazed that there is such misunderstanding of what our country is about, that people would hate us. I am, I am—like most Americans, I just can't believe it, because I know how good we are, and we've got to do a better job of making our case. We've got to do a better job of explaining to the people in the Middle East, for example, that we don't fight a war against Islam or Muslims. We don't hold any religion accountable. We're fighting evil. And these murderers have hijacked a great religion in order to justify their evil deeds. And we cannot let it stand.

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 146
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

“One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way.”
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 98e

At a church in Cleveland. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/31/khizr-khan-calls-trump-a-black-soul-says-mcconnell-ryan-have-moral-obligation-to-repudiate-him/ The Washington Post (July 31, 2016)
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016)