“God is not a basis for interpreting the world, but the fact which really transforms it.”
Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt (1928–2002) German theologian
"Socialism in the Theology of Karl Barth"
Notebooks (Summer 1886 – Fall 1887)
Variant translation: Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations…
As translated in The Portable Nietzsche (1954) by Walter Kaufmann, p. 458
“God is not a basis for interpreting the world, but the fact which really transforms it.”
Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt (1928–2002) German theologian
"Socialism in the Theology of Karl Barth"
“We only have observations and interpretations. Most of the interpretations remain questionable.”
Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist
Source: PsyberMagick (1995), p. 12
Context: We doubt that any facts actually exist. We only have observations and interpretations. Most of the interpretations remain questionable.
Norman L. Geisler (1932–2019) American evangelical theologian
Christian Apologetics
“There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena”
Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Robert Floyd (1936–2001) American computer scientist
Source: Assigning Meanings to Programs http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~weimer/2007-615/reading/FloydMeaning.pdf (1967), p. 25.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Variant: We have spiritual facts and their interpretations by which they are communicated to others, sruti or what is heard, and smṛti or what is remembered. Śaṅkara equates them with pratyakṣa or intuition and anumana or inference. It is the distinction between immediacy and thought. Intuitions abide, while interpretations change.
Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist
Source: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. vii.
Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist
Chomsky and Herman (1979), After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, p. vii.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1970s
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist
Light (1919), Ch. XX The Cult
Context: My spirit is no longer what it was. Vaguely I seek, everywhere. I must see things with all their consequences, and right to their source. Against all the chains of facts I must have long arguments to bring; and the world's chaos requires an interpretation equally terrible.