Quotes about interpretation
page 7

“[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 10

Nature, Time, Future

“As Adorno wrote of Anna Freud’s book, it evinces “the reduction of psychoanalysis to a conformist interpretation of the reality principle.””

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 41

Books, Reality

“The missionary calling has sometimes been interpreted as a calling to stem this fearful cataract of souls going to eternal perdition. But I do not find this in the center of the New Testament representation of the missionary calling.”

Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) Christian missionary

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans, 1989 (reprinted 2002),125.

Fear, Soul

“In societies based around small communities, where almost everyone is either a friend, a relative, or an enemy of everyone else, the languages spoken tend even to lack words that correspond to "self-interest" or "altruism" but include very subtle vocabularies for describing envy, solidarity, pride, and the like. Their economic dealings with one another likewise tend to be based on much more subtle principles. … The work of destroying such ways of life is still often done by missionaries—representatives of those very world religions that originally sprang up in reaction to the market long ago. Missionaries, of course, are out to save souls; but they rarely interpret this to mean their role is simply to teach people to accept God and be more altruistic. Almost invariably, they end up trying to convince people to be more selfish and more altruistic at the same time. On the one hand, they set out to teach the "natives" proper work discipline, and try to get them involved with buying and selling products on the market, so as to better their material lot. At the same time, they explain to them that ultimately, material things are unimportant.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Army of Altruists (2007)

Life, God, People, World

“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything”

Donald Davidson (philosopher) (1917–2003) scriitor amator

Donald Davidson. "Radical interpretation." Dialectica 27.3‐4 (1973): p. 324; as cited in; Herman Parret, ‎Jacques Bouveresse (1981) Meaning and Understanding, p. 186

Way, Intelligence, Optimism, Falseness

“[ Milton Friedman was] the dominant member of the so-called Chicago school of economics [during his tenure at Chicago]… The economics department increasingly reflected his approach and interests. These included deep commitment to the truth, appreciation of markets and free enterprise, frank and blunt discussion, and enormous zeal to convince the heathen. But most important was the commitment to economic analysis as a powerful instrument for interpreting economic and social life.”

Gary S. Becker (1930–2014) American economist

Gary Becker (1991). "Milton Friedman." In: Edward Shils, ed. Remembering the University of Chicago: Teachers, Scientists and Scholars. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 140-6

Life, Truth, School

“Gsell: What astonishes me, is that your way is so different from that of other sculptors. They prose the model. Instead of that, you wait till a model has instinctively or accidentally taken an Interesting pose, and thon you reproduce It. Instead of your giving orders to the model, the model gives orders to you.
Rodin: I am not at the model's orders; I am at Nature's. Doubtless my confreres have their reasons for proceeding as they do. But when one constrains Nature in that way and treats human beings as mannikins, one runs a risk of getting nothing but dead, artificial results. A hunter of truth and a trapper of life. I am careful not to follow their example. I seize upon the movements I observe, but I don't dictate them. when a subject requires a predetermined pose, I merely Indicate It. For I want only what reality will afford without being forced. In everything I obey Nature. I never assume to command her. My sole ambition Is a servile fidelity.
Gsell : And yet, you take liberties with nature. You make changes.
Rodin : Not at all. I should be false to myself if I did.
Gsell : But you finished work is never like the plaster sketch
Rodin : That is so, but the sketch is far less true than the finished work. It would Impossible for a model to keep a living attitude during all the time it takes to shape the clay. Still, I retain a general idea of the pose and require the model to conform to it. But this is not all. The sketch reproduces only the exterior. I must next reproduce the spirit, which is every whit as essential a part of Nature. I see the whole truth — not merely the fraction of it that lies upon the surface. I accentuate tho lines that best express the spiritual state I am Interpreting.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Rodin on realism, 1910

Life, Truth, Way, Idea

“I raised my arms as if in prayer and heard the mutter of response behind me. Then I scattered the dried grains, red and brown and black, and studied the patterns they formed on the stone ledge before Sibbos. This is not such a mystic thing. You see what it is sensible to see, or else you interpret what you see so that the meaning comes out as you want it.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part I “Across the Ring”, Chapter 3 (p. 155)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Study

“As a graduate student at Yale, I studied the whole of Christian theology but focused my attention on the Darwinian controversies. I wanted to get to the root of the conflict between Darwinian evolution and Christian doctrine. In the course of my research I learned (to my surprise) that biblical chronology played almost no role in the 19th- century controversies, since most theologians had already accepted geological evidence for the age of the earth and re-interpreted the days in Genesis as long periods of time. Instead, the central issue was design. God created the cosmos with a plan in mind. This affirmation is among the most basic in all of Christianity (and other theistic religions as well, including Unificationism). And that plan included human beings as the final outcome of the creative process: we are created in the image of God.”

Jonathan Wells (1942) American intelligent design advocate

Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Wells/DARWIN.htm

God, Age, Religion, Study

“The bullying powers use different excuses to prevent transfer of science and technology and progress of the nations of our region.
They regard our advancement as a threat to the corrupt Zionist regime. They do not allow the countries of the region to tread on the path to progress and advancement.
They even oppose indigenous technologies in the Islamic countries and interpret any scientific advancement as a threat to the security of Qods occupier regime.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

2006, 2006 International Qods Conference address

Science, Country

“I abandoned the extraterrestrial hypothesis in 1967 when my own field investigations disclosed an astonishing overlap between psychic phenomena and UFOs … The objects and apparitions do not necessarily originate on another planet and may not even exist as permanent constructions of matter. It is more likely that we see what we want to see and interpret such visions according to our contemporary beliefs.”

John A. Keel (1930–2009) American writer

http://www.ufoevidence.org/Researchers/Detail71.htm

“Reincarnation is but a part of this probability system, the part that falls within your particular universe. There are also root dreams shared by the race as a whole. Most of these are not as symbolic as Jung thought them to be but are literal interpretations of the abilities used by the inner self. For that matter, as you know, flying dreams need not be symbolic of anything. They can be valid experiences, though often intermixed with other dream elements.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 309-310, quoting from Session 282

Dreams, Universe, Parting, Flying

“The idea of God is an interpretation of experience.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

God, Idea

“The point we want to make here is that sensemaking is about plausibility, coherence, and reasonableness. Sensemaking is about accounts that are socially acceptable and credible… It would be nice if these accounts were also accurate. But in an equivocal, postmodern world, infused with the politics of interpretation and conflicting interests and inhabited by people with multiple shifting identities, an obsession with accuracy seems fruitless, and not of much practical help, either.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 61, as cited in: Uta Priss, ‎Simon Polovina, ‎Richard Hill (2007), Conceptual Structures: Knowledge Architectures for Smart Applications. p. 31

People, World, Help

“Ptolemy… against the champions of this or that cosmology of the heavens… had dared to claim that it is legitimate to interpret the facts of astronomy by the simplest geometrical scheme which will 'save the phenomena,' no matter whose metaphysics might be upset. His conception of the physical structure of the earth, however, prevented him from carrying through in earnest this principle of relativity, as his objections to the hypothesis that the earth moves amply show.”

Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892–1989) American philosopher

Source: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), p. 35

“The Goldberg Variations have always enjoyed a special status, with pianists regarding them as a touchstone of their technical and interpretative powers. At stake are the ability to light up the work from within, a tightrope walk that at the same time describes a vast circle, starting out and returning to a state of apotheotic stillness, the ability to find one’s bearings within a particular concentration of inner and outer complexity, an inner and outer coherence and homogeneity that are all-embracing, the ability, finally, to produce an explosion of inner cells by reduced means and, hence, a particular sensitivity, sinewy tension, and color. The performer must play a game with particular devices, finding solutions to the problems posed by the work not in octave doublings and other playful expedients but in a tightly structured inner rigor and order. What is demanded is a particular form of internalization, of inner and outer lyricism. It is this that makes the Goldberg Variations so unique - and so demanding.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Color, Game, Problem, Light

“Geography is concerned to provide accurate, orderly, and rational description and interpretation of the variable character of the earth surface.”

Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) American Geographer

Source: Perspective on the nature of geography (1958), p. 21

“Marx set out to resolve the contradictions and to correct the errors in classical political economy. In this he thought he had succeeded very well. Judging by the sound and the fury of the controversy surrounding his interpretations, he either succeeded too well or deluded himself to the success of his enterprise.”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 2, Production and Distribution, p. 39

Error, Success

“Among the earliest attempts to explain Pāṇini was the formulation of rules of interpretation or paribhāshās; a collection of these was made in the last century by Nāgojibhaṭṭa in his Paribhāshenduçekhara.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Appendix A History of Sanskrit Literature

“It is impossible to explain the recent works of these 'savages' as a formal development and new interpretation of Impressionism... The most beautiful prismatic colors and the celebrated Cubism are now meaningless goals for these 'savages.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

1911 - 1914, The 'Savages' of Germany' (1912)

Beauty, Color

“It (objection to a machine that could think) was the hook used by the rabble rousers, whose monopoly of moral interpretation might be challenged.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 18.

Thinking

“These men have replaced mind with platitude, and the dogmas by which they are legitimated are so widely accepted that no counterbalance of mind prevails against them. They have replaced the responsible interpretation of events with the disguise of events by a maze of public relations.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

The Power Elite (1956)

Men

“The only meaningful interpretation of any religious teaching is to honor the divine within ourselves and love the divine in one another.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Love

“The passion to interpret as madness that with which we disagree seems to have infected the best of contemporary minds.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 203.

Passion, Madness

“The last two decades have witnessed, especially in Germany and France, the rise of a new discipline, the sociology of knowledge (Wissenssoziologie), with a rapidly increasing number of students and a growing literature (even a “selected bibliography” would include several hundred titles). Since most of the investigations in this field have been concerned with the socio-cultural factors influencing the development of beliefs and opinion rather than of positive knowledge, the term. “Wissen” must be interpreted very broadly indeed, as referring to social ideas and thought generally, and not to the physical sciences, except where expressly indicated.”

Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) American sociologist

Source: The Sociology of Knowledge, (1937), p. 493

Literature, Idea, Knowledge, Science

“I continue to believe that we can fight this overreach from within the existing system and framework. If I have to, I will use one challenge after another to dismantle governmental operations that I consider violations of the Constitution. During my time as a judge, as a justice, and as attorney general, I’ve had one overarching goal, and that is a strict interpretation and application of the laws and the Constitution. I would be Madisonian.”

Greg Abbott (1957) 48th Governor of Texas

Greg Abbott’s War https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/greg-abbotts-war/ (September 2012)

Justice, Law, Time, Fight

“So intimate is the union between Mathematics and Physics that probably by far the larger part of the accessions to our mathematical knowledge have been obtained by the efforts of mathematicians to solve the problems set to them by experiment, and to create for each successive class phenomena a new calculus or a new geometry, as the case might be, which might prove not wholly inadequate to the subtlety of nature. Sometimes the mathematician has been before the physicist, and it has happened that when some great and new question has occurred to the experimentalist or the observer, he has found in the armory of the mathematician the weapons which he needed ready made to his hand. But much oftener, the questions proposed by the physicist have transcended the utmost powers of the mathematics of the time, and a fresh mathematical creation has been needed to supply the logical instrument requisite to interpret the new enigma.”

Henry John Stephen Smith (1826–1883) mathematician

As quoted in The Century: A Popular Quarterly (1874) ed. Richard Watson Gilder, Vol. 7, pp. 508-509, https://books.google.com/books?id=ceYGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA508 "Relations of Mathematics to Physics". Earlier quote without citation in Nature, Volume 8 (1873), page 450. Also quoted partially in Michael Grossman and Robert Katz, Calculus http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=216746186|Non-Newtonian (1972) p. iv. ISBN 0912938013.

Mathematics, Question, Nature, Knowledge

“This is a personal story of statistics, properly interpreted, as profoundly nurturant and life-giving.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

The Median Isn't the Message (1985)

Life, Personality

““The achievement of this task depends on attaining to the true distinction, the real relation, between the two orders of existence which to ordinary and uncritical reflexion — usual common-sense — appear as two substances, so called, or species of substance, and are named "mind" and "matter." What is to be shown is, that this common-sense contrast, read off as a hard-and-fast dualism, is not intelligibly interpretable except as the distinction between two aspects of one and the same total nature in the beings that possess it””

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Preface to Second Edition, p.xlvi

Intelligence, Nature, Sense, Appearance

“The new historiography on Logical Empiricism sets in with the rediscovery of Ernst Mach (1838-1916) as a precursor of Gestalt theory, evolutionary epistemology, (possibly radical) constructivism and the modern historically oriented philosophy of science. But already in Mach’s reception of the Vienna Circle one can see not only a certain pluralism of views but also a polarization of the various positions (Mach’s influence on Carnap’s Aufbau / Logical Construction, the critical distancing to “psychologism” in the manifesto, the alternative to the principle of economy in Karl Menger, etc.) Nevertheless, this research program, which was interpreted differently by the Vienna Circle, actually represented a sort of prototype for Logical Empiricism in the interwar years – irrespective of whether one backs the bold claim as to the existence of a “typical Austrian philosophy” (as opposed to German idealism).”

Friedrich Stadler (1951) Austrian historian

Source: "What is the Vienna Circle?" 2006, p. xiii

Science

“…was to interpret the life of Indians and particularly the poor Indians, pictorially.”

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) Hungarian Indian artist

Proclamation of her mission when she painted "The Beggars and Woman with Sunflower".
Sikh Heritage,Amrita Shergil

Life

“I beheld with my eyes. And handled with my hands the gold plates from which it was translated. I also beheld the Interpreters.”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Miller, Diary, quoted in Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, p. 78 (October 21, 1848).

“The Christian world seethed not only with apocryphal writings, but with hostile interpretations of writings not apocryphal.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

p, 125
New Fragments (1892)

Hostility, World

“We're talking about terrorism carried out in the name of Islam, by Muslims, and justified using their holy scripture. But apparently it's got nothing to do with Islam. Well, I'm sorry, but just because every Muslim doesn't support it doesn't mean it's not Islamic. People say you can't judge Islam by its followers, but that's like saying you can't judge a football team by its results. Islam is its followers. Because there's no central authority the Koran is open to interpretation by men, who, being human, will always interpret to suit their own cultural prejudices. So Islam is its followers. It's a representation of how they interpret their holy book. And therefore, the only way it can be judged is by their behaviour.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sharia fiasco" (10 February 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=mM2dC1iWzww 2008

Men, People, Books, Way

“Today’s smut is tomorrow’s fine art. The profane, with the passage of time becomes sacred. Having suffered under a reactionary ontological hermeneutics for the last fifty years, the extremist movement constitutes an emergent phenomenon which is more than the sum of the processes from which it has emerged. Interpretation theory rewarded by dominant culture would have us believe that history is objective when in fact its subjective nature is based on hierarchical systems of exploitation benefiting a global elite.”

Nick Zedd (1958) American film maker

Quoted in: Nick Zedd’s The Extremist Manifesto http://www.undergroundfilmjournal.com/nick-zedds-the-extremist-manifesto/ By Mike Everleth, March 7, 2013 The Extremist Manifesto, 2013

Art, History, Nature, Suffering

“.. a single uninterrupted and continuous surface from which anything superfluous and all interpretative possibilities are excluded. [referring to his 'Achromes', Manzoni started to make in 1957]”

Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) Italian artist

Quote of Manzoni, in Display Caption of 'Achrome' 1958 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/manzoni-achrome-t01871', Tate, July 2008]

“When we own up our mistakes some people interpret it as if we are wrong. They too commit mistakes.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

Quoted in Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,

People

“Even if it were clear what was meant, this sort of treatment would seem closer to describing what is taking place than to explaining it. I do not want to deny the value of describing a phenomenon; rich descriptions facilitate theorizing, and there is no more astute observer than Piaget. But in my view explanations of cognitive phenomena should specify the ways in which functional capacities operate. Piaget and Inhelder’s account is more on the level of intentionality, and hence is open to multiple interpretations at the level of the function of the brain. The do not specify how interiorized imitation operates, nor have they specified the format or content of the image. This level of discourse will never produce process adequacy, and hence seems of limited value.”

Stephen Kosslyn (1948) American psychologist

Source: Image and Mind. 1980, p. 411

Way

“When students' language, culture and experience are ignored or excluded in classroom interactions, students are immediately starting from a disadvantage. Everything they have learned about life and the world up to this point is being dismissed as irrelevant to school learning; there are few points of connection to curriculum materials or instruction and so students are expected to learn in an experiential vacuum. Students' silence and nonparticipation under these conditions have frequently been interpreted as lack of academic ability or effort, and teachers’ interactions with students have reflected a pattern of low expectations which become self-fulfilling.”

Jim Cummins (professor) (1949) professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto

Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society (1996), pp. 2-3

Life, World, School, Effort

“Quantum interference—the crosstalk among similar quantum states—knits the different versions of your brain together."
"You're saying that my consciousness extends across multiple cosmi," I said. "That's a pretty wild statement."
"I'm saying all things do," Orolo said. "That comes with the polycosmic interpretation. The only thing exceptional about the brain is that it has found a way to use this.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Part 8, "Orithena"
Anathem (2008)

Way

“The way liberals are interpreting the First Amendment today is that it prevents anyone who is religious from being in government. They say that violates the prohibition against church and state.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

[The Way Things Ought to Be, Pocket Books, October 1992, 277, 978-0671751456, 92028659, 26397008, 1724938M]

Way

“The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Gutkind Letter (3 January 1954), [Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear, The Guardian, 13 May 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion]
1950s

God, People, Religion, Change

“One trader's move in the market can be interpreted by another trader as relevant additional information due to the uncertainty he faces.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 6, Hierarchies, Complex Fractal Dimensions, And Log Periodicity, p. 182.

“When one of Feuerbach’s friends attempts to get him an academic position, Feuerbach writes to him: “The more people make of me, the less I am, and vice versa. I am … something only so long as I am nothing.” Hegel felt himself free in the midst of bourgeois restriction. For him, it was by no means impossible as an ordinary official … to be something and at the same time be himself. … In the third epoch of the spirit, that is, since the beginning of the “modern” world, he says … philosophers no longer comprise a separate class; they are what they are, in perfectly ordinary relationship to the state: officially appointed teachers of philosophy. Hegel interprets this transformation as the “reconciliation of the worldly principle with itself.” It is open to each and every one to construct his own “inner world” independent of the force of circumstances which has materialized. The philosopher can now entrust the “external” side of his existence to the “order,” just as the modern man allows fashion to dictate the way he will dress. … The important thing, Hegel concludes, is “to remain true to one’s purpose” within the context of the normal life of a citizen. To be free for truth and at the same time dependent on the state—to him, these two things seemed quite consistent with each other.”

Karl Löwith book From Hegel to Nietzsche

From Hegel to Nietzsche, D. Green, trans. (1964), pp. 68-69.

Life, People, Truth, World

“To approach Bach, one has to realize that 100 years after Bach’s death, Bach and his music totally had been forgotten. Even while he was still alive, Bach himself believed in the polyphonic power and the resulting symmetric architectures of well-proportioned music. But this had been an artificial truth - even for him. Other composers, including his sons, already composed in another style, where they found other ideals and brought them to new solutions. The spirit of the time already had changed while Bach was still alive. A hundred years later, it was Mendelssohn who about 1850 discovered Bach anew with the performance of the St. Matthew Passion. Now a new renaissance began, and the world learned to know the greatness of Bach. To become acquainted with Bach, many transcriptions were done. But the endeavors in rediscovering Bach had been - stylistically - in a wrong direction. Among these were the orchestral transcriptions of Leopold Stokowski, and the organ interpretations of the multitalented Albert Schweitzer, who, one has to confess, had a decisive effect on the rediscovery of Bach. All performances had gone in the wrong direction: much too romantic, with a false knowledge of historic style, the wrong sound, the wrong rubato, and so on. The necessity of artists like Rosalyn Tureck and Glenn Gould - again 100 years later - has been understandable: The radicalism of Glenn Gould pointed out the real clarity and the internal explosions of the power-filled polyphony in the best way. This extreme style, called by many of his critics refrigerator interpretations, however really had been necessary to demonstrate the right strength to bring out the architecture in the right manner, which had been lost so much before. I’m convinced that the style Glenn Gould played has been the right answer. But there has been another giant: it was no less than Helmut Walcha who, also beginning in the 1950, started his legendary interpretations for the DG-Archive productions of the complete organ-work cycle on historic organs (Silbermann, Arp Schnitger). Also very classical in strength of speed and architectural proportions, he pointed out the polyphonic structures in an enlightened but moreover especially humanistic way, in a much more smooth and elegant way than Glenn Gould on the piano. Some years later it was Virgil Fox who acquainted the U. S. with tours of the complete Bach cycle, which certainly was effective in its own way, but much more modern than Walcha. The ranges of Bach interpretations had become wide, and there were the defenders of the historical style and those of the much more modern romantic style. Also the performances of the orchestral and cantata Bach had become extreme: on one side, for example, Karl Richter, who used a big and rich-toned orchestra; on the other side Helmut Rilling, whose Bach was much more historically oriented.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Death, Truth, World, Music

“Oh, where is man—
That mortal god, that hath no mortal kin
Or like on earth? Shall Nature's orator—
The interpreter of all her mystic strains —
Shall he be mute in Nature's jubilee?”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Sylphs
Poems (1851), Prometheus

God, Nature

“As a mathematical object, the constitution is maximally simple, consistent, necessarily incomplete, and interpretable as a model of natural law. Political authority is allocated solely to serve the constitution. There are no authorities which are not overseen, within nonlinear structures. Constitutional language is formally constructed to eliminate all ambiguity and to be processed algorithmically. Democratic elements, along with official discretion, and legal judgment, is incorporated reluctantly, minimized in principle, and gradually eliminated through incremental formal improvement. Argument defers to mathematical expertise. Politics is a disease that the constitution is designed to cure.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"A Republic, If You Can Keep It" https://web.archive.org/web/20140327090001/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/articles/12321 (2013) (original emphasis)

Disease, Law, Mathematics, Nature

“As long as one does not call his own position into question but regards it as absolute, while interpreting his opponents' ideas as a mere function of the social positions they occupy, the decisive step forward has not yet been taken.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

Idea, Question, Decision

“To look at the symbolic dimensions of social action — art, religion, ideology, science, law, morality, common sense — is not to turn away from the existential dilemmas of life for some empyrean realm of de-emotionalized forms; it is to plunge into the midst of them. The essential vocation of interpretive anthropology is not to answer our deepest questions, but to make available to us answers that others, guarding other sheep in other valleys, have given, and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man has said.”

Clifford Geertz book The Interpretation of Cultures

Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 30

Life, Religion, Law, Art

“If the present volume will help towards the comprehension of the fundamental principles on which the science of thermodynamics rests, and also serve to bring home the importance of a knowledge of these principles in the suggestion and interpretation of experimental work, the purpose which has been kept in view during its preparation will have been amply fulfilled. In any case, it is hoped that neither the extreme view that thermodynamic principles alone suffice in the construction of a systematic physical or chemical science, nor the equally mistaken opinion that they are of little practical utility to the experimental worker, can fairly result from its study.”

J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist

A Text-Book of Thermodynamics with Special Reference to Chemistry (1913)

Hope, Home, Knowledge, Study

“More and more as we come closer and closer in touch with nature and its teachings are we able to see the Divine and are therefore fitted to interpret correctly the various languages spoken by all forms of nature about us.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

How to Search for Truth, letter to Hubert W. Pelt (1930-02-24)

Nature

“On the side of physics, there were a few key figures in Oxford who realized, in all probability unlike the majority of their colleagues in the physics department, that physics without interpretation is only part of the story, and that theories like quantum mechanics need careful foundational reflection.”

Harvey Brown (philosopher) (1950) Philosopher of physics

Physics and Philiosophy in Oxford: a prosperous example of interdisciplinarity, in [Innovation and interdisciplinarity in the university, EDIPUCRS, 2007, 8-574-30677-0, 304 http://books.google.com/books?id=-OGr007TQ0AC&printsec=frontcover#PPA304,M1]

Parting

“Many creationists say that it is impossible to understand or believe the Bible unless it is read “in the spirit of the holy ghost”. In other words, you must already assume its truth before you read it, and you have to read it through filters of faith because it certainly isn’t compelling on its own without those blinders on. If it doesn’t make sense, then you’ve got to convince yourself that you must not understand it properly, and you’ve just got to try to make yourself believe it anyway somehow. That is precisely why creationist faith is deemed ‘dogmatic’. But that’s also proof by admission that even a literal reading must be “interpreted.””

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

So its very design is such that the Bible can not be either inerrant or “absolute truth”. "3rd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnj7PlqmJ5o, Youtube (December 10, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Truth, Faith, Understanding, Sense

“Nevertheless. among all the temptations I will have to resist today. There would be the temptation of memory: to recount what was for me. and for those of my generation who shared it during a whole lifetime. The experience of Marxism. The quasi-paternal figure of Marx, the way it fought in us with other filiations, the reading of texts and the interpretation of a world in which the Marxist inheritance was-and still remains, and so it will remain-absolutely and thoroughly determinate. One need not be a Marxist or a communist in order to accept this obvious fact. We all live in a world, some would say a culture, that still bears, at an incalculable depth, the mark of this inheritance, whether in a directly visible fashion or not.”

Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx

Injunctions of Marx
Specters of Marx (1993)

World, Way, Fashion, Memory

“Earlier today we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. ‘We the people.’ It is a very eloquent beginning. But, when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that ‘We, the people.’ I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But, through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in ‘We, the people.”

Barbara Jordan (1936–1996) American politician

Statement before the House Judiciary Committee considering impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon (25 July 1974). (See External links)

People, Decision

“Photographers learn to interpret photographs in that technical way because they want to understand and use that ‘language’ themselves (just as musicians learn a more technical musical language than the layman needs). Social scientists who want to work with visual materials will have to learn to approach them in this more studious and time-consuming way”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Becker (1978) cited in: Peter Hamilton (2006) Visual Research Methods'. Volume 1. p. 214.

Music, Way, Understanding, Learning

“The re-interpretation and eventually eradication of the concept of right and wrong which has been the basis of child training, the substitution of intelligent and rational thinking for faith in the certainties of the old people, these are the belated objectives of practically all effective psychotherapy.”

Brock Chisholm (1896–1971) Doctor and soldier

Brock Chisholm (1946) The Psychiatry of Enduring Peace and Social Progress. p. 5

People, Faith, Intelligence, Thinking

“Interpreting the Orient through the arts would destroy it, the artistic exploitation might eventually prove as harmful as military or political adventurism.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

Quote from Three Nineteenth-Century French Writer/Artists & the Maghreb; Günther Narr, Verlag Tübingen, 1994, p. 51

Art

“Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense impression and thought, can, following Plato, interpret the process of understanding nature as a correspondence, that is, a coming into congruence of pre-existing images of the human psyche with external objects and their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato, looks on the pre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development of a conscious point of view, so that the word "dialectic" which Plato is fond of using may be applied to the process of development of human knowledge.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Writings on Physics and Philosophy http://books.google.com/books?id=ueTd4g7pc5MC (1994) 16. "Science and Western Thought" p. 142

Understanding, Nature, Knowledge, Sense

“Mathematics has also been developed as a philosophy, in the sense in which this term is defined by A. N. Whitehead as 'the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical and necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted'. Substitute 'mathematics' for 'experience' and we have an admirable description of its speculative and philosophic development…. Philosophy of mathematics… has its paradoxes and antimonies, and also diverse schools of thought…”

George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician

100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)

School, Mathematics, Idea, Sense

“To talk about sensemaking is to talk about reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of the situations in which they find themselves and their creations. There is a strong reflexive quality to this process. People make sense of things by seeing a world on which they already imposed what they believe. In other words, people discover their own inventions. This is why sensemaking can be understood as invention and interpretations understood as discovery. These are complementary ideas. If sensemaking is viewed as an act of invention, then it is also possible to argue that the artifacts it produces include language games and texts.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Source: 1980s-1990s, Sensemaking in Organizations, 1995, p. 15

People, World, Game, Idea

“This book reports the findings from a study of job motivation based on a fresh approach to this problem. It is an important study, since the analyses and interpretations of the authors suggest that a breakthrough may well have been made to provide new insights into the nature and method of operation of job attitudes.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p.vii: Preface ; lead paragraph

Books, Motivation, Nature, Problem

“But who is there to help when all the "helpers" fear their own personal history? Bogus traditional morality, destructive religious interpretations, and confusion in our methods of childrearing all make this experience harder and hinder our initiative. Without a doubt, the pharmaceutical industry also profits from our blindness and despondency.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

Fear, History, Help, Personality

“All that progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Section II: “What Is Progress?”, p. 48 http://books.google.com/books?id=MW8SAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA48&dq=%22All+that+progressives+ask%22 1910s, The New Freedom (1913)

“The central idea of quantum theory is that energy, like matter, is not continuous but it exists only in discrete packets. Discreteness of matter and charge on the microscopic scale seems entirely reasonable and familiar to us, based on the modern picture of atomic structure. But, the idea that energy also exists only in discrete chunks is contrary to our experience of the macroscopic world. The motions of a soccer ball rolling up and down the sides of a gully involve arbitrary amounts of kinetic and potential energy; nothing in ordinary human experience suggests that the energy of a system should change abruptly by “jumps.” Understanding quantum mechanics requires that we develop a new kind of physical intuition, based on the results of experiments that are impossible to understand using classical mechanics. These results are completely divorced from ordinary human experience in the macroscopic world around us, and our physical intuition from the macroscopic world cannot be transferred to the quantum domain. We must resist the urge to interpret these quantum results in terms of ordinary experience.”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 4 : Introduction to Quantum Mechanics

World, Idea, Understanding, Change

“If we compare the third-person attitude of someone who simply says how things stand (this is the attitude of the scientist, for example) with the performative attitude of someone who tries to understand what is said to him (this is the attitude of the interpreter, for example), the implications … become clear. … First, interpreters relinquish superiority that observers have by virtue of their privileged position, in that they themselves are drawn, at least potentially, into negotiations about the meaning and validity of utterances. By taking part in communicative action, they accept in principle the same status as those whose utterances they are trying to understand. … It is impossible to decide a priori who is to learn from whom.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Source: Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1983), p. 26

Communication, Understanding, Learning, Parting

“In Daniel 7, Daniel had a vision where “the four winds of the heavens strove upon the great sea. And four beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another” (vv. 2-3). In the vision, Daniel saw a lion with eagle’s wings, a bear with three ribs in its mouth, a leopard with four wings, and a terrible beast with iron teeth and ten horns (v. 7). Bible scholars have speculated on the meaning of this passage for centuries. Some think the four beasts in this chapter represent a rehash of the first four empires from Babylon to the Roman Empire; while others think it is all yet in the future. I’m no scholar but here is my opinion: I (and many Bible scholars) think the four beasts are four world powers that will “strive” for world power (domination?) at the end of time before the one with ten horns finally becomes dominant. I think the four beasts are interpreted as follows: The lion sometimes standing like a man with eagle’s wings (v. 4) represents England (whose symbol as always been the lion) and America (whose symbol is the eagle) united, as one of four major end-time powers. The eagle’s wings “were plucked” and “it was lifted up from the earth, and made to stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it” (v. 4). My best guess is that America will soon cease to be a world power (wings plucked) but there will still be enough of a godly influence that the English/American alliance will have some “heart” or compassion and maybe even be able to finally “take a stand” for God in the wicked world. I think the bear (v. 5) is Russia (whose symbol is the bear) and the three ribs in its mouth represent three countries it has dominated or “eaten,” such as Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, or perhaps Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia. The leopard with four wings (v. 6) could be some sort of oriental alliance between China, Japan, Korea, and a Southeast Asia alliance (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, etc.). Verse 6 says, “dominion was given to it.” Many certainly feel that China is soon to be the major economic (and military) power in the world. If they could get a military or economic alliance with some of the other oriental nations mentioned, they would indeed be a force to be reckoned with! No animal is named for the fourth beast. It is only described as being dreadful, terrible, strong exceedingly, having great iron teeth, different from all other beasts and having ten horns. As I said earlier there are three options from what I can see for this beast. It is either (A) the European Common Market or a future similar alliance; or (B) 10 world regions and (C) some sort of alliance of Muslim nations around the Middle East or the world. I tend to go with option (C)”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 94-95

God, World, Feeling, Thinking

“I always found it ironic when a Saudi official bashes Islamists, given that Saudi Arabia is the mother of all political Islam — and even describes itself as an in its “ Higher Law.” (We avoid the term “constitution” because of its secular interpretation and often say that the Koran is our constitution.)”

Jamal Khashoggi (1958–2018) Saudi Arabian journalist

"Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive. Now it’s unbearable." in The Washington Post (18 September 2017)

Law

“The Volta is taken from a Federico Fellini book about his films, what he characterizes as a changing of scene, or a turnaround; a new scene to him is called Volta. Y'know, changing of time and the changeover. And Mars, we're just fascinated by science fiction so and it's something that ultimately looked as in anything I write, its meaning is always up to the listener. As the way we write songs and words, if it looks great on paper then to us it's like painting, so if it looks good meaning the second then people usually have a better interpretation than we ever would.”

Cedric Bixler-Zavala (1974) American singer

Bixler-Zavala about the bandname The Mars Volta http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/The_Mars_Volta_-_Etymology_and_trivia/id/2070708

People, Books, Way, Science

“The Bill of Rights must be subjected to no 'interpretation' of any kind except in terms of the original intent of the Founding Fathers, a group of individuals who had just barely defeated the most overbearing, ruthless, and dangerously violent government in the history of the world. Even the British people were having trouble with it at the time.
The Bill of Rights represents an historic bargain between those who advocated a strong central government — and whose political ideas and wishes are expressed in the main body of the Constitution — and those who did not. Without the Bill of Rights, the Constitution ceases to be valid; any legitimate authority that derives from it ceases to exist.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Toward an International Bill of Rights Union," http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?p=36 31 August 2007.

People, World, History, Idea

“The interpretation reflects my deepest respect for the major composition of the musical literature.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Music, Literature

“Non-Fijian and perhaps a western interpretation could spark insensitivity from various points of view.”

Hafiz Khan Fijian politician

Maiden speech to the Senate, 24 August 2005 (excerpts)

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Brotherhood by Inversion", p. 330-31
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Confidence, History, Optimism, Nature

“By the time it comes to interpretation of the substantive conclusions, the assumptions on which the model has been based are easily forgotten. But it is precisely the empirical validity of these assumptions on which the usefulness of the entire exercise depends… A natural Darwinian feedback operating through selection of academic personnel contributes greatly to the perpetuation of this state of affairs.”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Source: "Theoretical assumptions and nonobserved facts," 1971, p. 3.

Exercises, Nature, Time, Dependency

“She approached the king, and making a low courtesy, said to him, "Lauerd king wacht heil!" The king, at the sight of the lady's face, was on a sudden both surprised and inflamed with her beauty; and calling on his interpreter, asked him what she said, and what answer he should make her. "She called you, 'Lord king,'" said the interpreter, "and offered to drink your health. Your answer to her must be, Drinc heil!"”
Accedens deinde proprius rege flexis genibus dixit. "Lauerd King, wassheil." At ille visa facie puelle admiratus est tantum eius decorum et incalvit. Denique interrorogavit interpretem suum quid dixerat puella, et quid ei respondere deberet. Cui interpres dixit, "Vocavit te dominum regem et vocabulo salutacionis honoravit. Quid autem respondere debes est 'drincheil.'"

Geoffrey of Monmouth The History of the Kings of Britain

Accedens deinde proprius rege flexis genibus dixit. "Lauerd King, wassheil."
At ille visa facie puelle admiratus est tantum eius decorum et incalvit. Denique interrorogavit interpretem suum quid dixerat puella, et quid ei respondere deberet. Cui interpres dixit, "Vocavit te dominum regem et vocabulo salutacionis honoravit. Quid autem respondere debes est 'drincheil.'"
Bk. 6, ch. 12; p. 186.
Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)

Health, Beauty, Drink

“The innovator, however, must in the first place be discontented, he must doubt the value of what he is doing or question the accepted ways of doing it. And secondly, he must be prepared to take fresh paths, to venture into fields where he is by no means expert. This is true, at least, of major forms of innovation; they make it possible for other men to be expert, but are not themselves forms of expertise. Freud was not an expert psycho-analyst; before Freud wrote there was no such thing; he created the standards by which psycho-analysts are judged expert. Neither was Marx an expert in interpreting history in economic terms nor Darwin an expert in evolutionary biology. If a man is trained, purely and simply, to be expert and contented in a particular task he will not innovate; Freud would have remained an anatomist, Marx a philosopher, Darwin a field-naturalist.”

John Passmore (1914–2004) Australian philosopher

Source: The Perfectibility of Man (1971), p. 282.

Men, Way, History, Question

“For me, the only correct meaning of that phrase is that our Government must proceed according to the 'law of the land'—that is, according to written constitutional and statutory provisions as interpreted by court decisions.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

On due process, dissenting in In Re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970).

Law, Decision

“The history of the Austrian school remains unfinished, and what happens in the future may influence interpretations of the past as much as what has already occurred. An increasing number of economists, however, believe that a reconceptualization of the role the Austrian school has played in academic economics from the 1870s to the present would be more accurate than the prevailing view.”

Alan O. Ebenstein (1959) American political scientist, educator and author

Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003)

School, History, Past, Future

“There is no difficulty in securing enough agreement for action on the point that education should serve the needs of the people. But all hinges on the interpretation of needs; if the primary need of man is to perfect his spiritual being … then education of the mind and the passions will take precedence over all else. The growth of materialism, however, has made this a consideration remote and even incomprehensible to the majority.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 49.

People, Education, Passion, Perfection

“Quantum mechanics is the most useful and powerful theory physicists have ever devised. Yet today, nearly 90 years after its formulation, disagreement about the meaning of the theory is stronger than ever. New interpretations appear every year. None ever disappear. … The message from QBism is this: You needn't feel guilty about never getting nervous about this stuff. You were right not to be bothered. But for the sake of intellectual coherence, you had better reexamine what you wrongly may have thought you understood perfectly well about the nature of probability.”

David Mermin (1935) American physicist

Fixing the shifty split http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.1618, Physics Today, Volume 65, Issue 7, July 2012, p. 8

Feeling, Nature, Appearance

“But after a while, some higher brain-center cut in, and I began being mentally able to fit the wildly changing scenery into a coherent four-dimensional whole. The process was really no more devious than the process by which one integrates the two hundred lines of a TV screen into a single two-dimensional image... which in turn is interpreted as a three-dimensional scene. It's just a matter of processing information. Impossible? I saw.”

Rudy Rucker (1946) American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

Source: The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 106

Change

“The majority of therapists work under the influence of destructive interpretations culled from both Western and Oriental religions, which preach forgiveness to the once-mistreated child. Thereby, they create a new vicious circle for people who, from their earliest years, have been caught in the vicious circle of pedagogy. For forgiveness does not resolve latent hatred and self-hatred but rather covers them up in a very dangerous way.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

People, Religion, Way, Forgiveness

“The manner in which time and space are bound up with each other in the four-dimensional continuum is variable. It is difficult to express this variability of the cross-connections between space and time in simple language, and different interpretations of it are possible, corresponding to different mathematical transformations of the fundamental line-element, e. g. a different choice of the variable which we interpret as "time." Perhaps the best way we can express it is by saying that the solution of the field-equations of the theory of relativity shows that there is in the universe a tendency to change its scale, which at the present time results in an expansion, but may perhaps at other times become, or have been, a shrinking. This is true of the grand scale model of the universe.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Way, Mathematics, Universe, Change

“The most moving appeal from the greatest of orators, the most beautifully written declaration of rights, the finest interpretation of American ideals by any living American finds the immigrant unresponsive if he has suffered injustice, if he has been denied a hearing, or if he has failed to see realized in the land of his dreams the things for which he left his native land. He forgives the man who has wronged him; he never forgets the government that has failed him. The law which was passed in one of the States prohibiting an alien from owning a dog, the enforcement of which resulted in deception and lying, has done much to imperil the immigrant's faith in the justice of American ideals. It reached his heart and his home, and he has never understood a country whose highest authority the court sanctioned such discriminations.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Faith, Justice, Law, Dogs

“The interlacedness of the two heterogeneous origins [Remark: This refers to the origins of governance: (1) necessity to work cooperatively, (2) the fight between man and man] prevails as the fundamental characteristic of governance. Therefore even any true community, being successful somewhere between boundaries for a common purpose, elsewhere becomes in theory a means for misleading, used to interpret and cover-up actually existing power. Again and again things are named by their contrary and are hidden. In that manner, under the pretense of communication - the open discussion - people are interrogated and commands are given, under the pretense of freedom and voluntariness behavior is enforced, in the coat of pure ethics the evil is carried out, under the pretense of truth lies and fraud are committed, and all values valid at any one time are, depending on the situation, either applied or ignored. [Remarks: "Herrschaft" = "governance" or "leadership", "Gewalt" = "power" or "violence"]”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

On Truth (1948), Pt 2, Ch. 3, II, B, 3, b)

People, Truth, Behavior, Communication

“Nothing is inanimate; what is the rest is our interpretation.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Life,” p. 108
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Is It Possible to Write a Poem”

“Without exception, all of the horrors connected with Christianity’s name came from following the letter rather than the spirit of the law, or by insistence upon literal interpretations -- while the spiritual, imaginative concepts beneath were ignored.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 829, Page 140-141
The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, (1981)

Law, Imagination

“I feel it, but I cannot express it,… I cannot analyse the Celtic genius to my own satisfaction. In the Middle Ages art came from groups, not from individuals. It was anonymous; the sculptors of cathedrals no more put their names to their works than our workmen put theirs on the pavement that they lay. Ah! what an admirable scorn of notoriety! The signature is what destroys us. We do portraits, but what we do is not so great. Thèse kings and queens, on the cathedrals, were not portraits. The fellow-workers stood for one another, and they interpreted; they did not copy. They made clothed figures; the nude and portraiture only date from the Renascence. And then those fellows cut with the tool's end into the block, that is why they were called sculptors. As for us, we are modellers. And what a disgraceful thing that casting from life is, which so many well-known sculptors do not blush to use! It is a mere swindling in art. Art was a vital function to the image-makers of the thirteenth century; they would hâve laughed at the idea of signing what they did, and never dreamed of honours and titles. When once their work was finished, they said no more about it, or else they talked among themselves. How curious it would hâve been to hear them, to be present at their gatherings, where they must hâve discussed in amusing phrases, and with simple, deep ideas!… Whenever the cathedrals disappear civilisation will go down one step. And even now we no longer understand them, we no longer know how to read their silent language. We need to make excavations not in the earth, but towards heaven…”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 63-64; About the genius of the Gothic sculptors.

Life, Age, Dreams, Art

“One golden rule is to accept the interpretation honestly put on the pledge by the party administering it.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Part I, Chapter 17, Experiments in Dietetics
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

“I leave you gentleman now. You will now write it; you will interpret it; that's your right. But as I leave you I want you to know…. just think how much you're going to be missing. You don't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference, and I hope that what I have said today will at least make television, radio, the press recognize that they have a right and a responsibility, if they're against a candidate give him the shaft, but also recognize if they give him the shaft, put one lonely reporter on the campaign who'll report what the candidate says now and then. Thank you, gentlemen, and good day.”

Richard Nixon book The Memoirs of Richard Nixon

Press conference after losing the election for Governor of California (November 7, 1962) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMSb-tS_OM; most reports used an official "Transcript of Nixon's News Conference on His Defeat by Brown in Race for Governor of California", as published in "The New York Times" (November 8, 1962), p. 18, also used in RN : The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978) and most published accounts which ended "You don't have Nixon to kick around any more because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you." 1960s

Hope, Thinking

“There are always alternative interpretations of the same data. It is often the case, however, that the alternatives that are rejected are treated as if they don't exist. But they do. And we should be aware not only of their existence and potential viability, but of the possibility that the hypotheses that we might embrace so strongly today may very well be the rejects of tomorrow.”

Jeffrey H. Schwartz (1948) American anthropologist

Preface
What the Bones Tell Us (1997)

“The world! It is a word capable of as diverse interpretations or misinterpretations as the thing itself — a thing by various people supposed to belong to heaven, man, or the devil, or alternatively to all three.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 9

People, World

“At the end of the Washington Monument rally in September, 1976, I was admitted to the second entering class at Unification Theological Seminary. During the next two years, I took a long prayer walk every evening. I asked God what He wanted me to do with my life, and the answer came not only through my prayers, but also through Father's many talks to us, and through my studies. Father encouraged us to set our sights high and accomplish great things. He also spoke out against the evils in the world; among them, he frequently criticized Darwin's theory that living things originated without God's purposeful, creative activity. My studies included modern theologians who took Darwinism for granted and thus saw no room for God's involvement in nature or history; in the process, they re-interpreted the fall, the incarnation, and even God as products of human imagination. Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph. D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.”

Jonathan Wells (1942) American intelligent design advocate

Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D. http://www.tparents.org/library/unification/talks/wells/DARWIN.htm

Life, God, World, Imagination

“Personally, I think you can put any interpretation you want on anything, but when someone suggests that Can't Buy Me Love is about a prostitute, I draw the line. That's going too far.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics (1969), p 107 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DKG-FXj_HNYC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=%22I+think+you+can+put+any+interpretation+you+want+on+anything,+but+when+someone+suggests+that+Can%E2%80%99t+Buy+Me+Love+is+about+a+prostitute,+I+draw+the+line.+That%E2%80%99s+going+too+far.%22&source=bl&ots=dZZ8CWP3RD&sig=72RA2gERz8OtnW7coK4F0ND9sXc&hl=en#v=onepage&q=%22I%20think%20you%20can%20put%20any%20interpretation%20you%20want%20on%20anything%2C%20but%20when%20someone%20suggests%20that%20Can%E2%80%99t%20Buy%20Me%20Love%20is%20about%20a%20prostitute%2C%20I%20draw%20the%20line.%20That%E2%80%99s%20going%20too%20far.%22&f=false

Love, Thinking, Drawing, Personality

“I am an anarchist, a political and social Huguenot; I deny everything and affirm naught but myself: because the sole truth of which I have material and moral proof and tangible, comprehensible and intelligible evidence, the only real, startling, non-arbitrary truth not susceptible to interpretation, is myself. I am. There I have a positive fact. Everything else is abstraction and, in mathematics, would be designated as "x", and unknown quantity; and I need not trouble myself with it.”

Anselme Bellegarrigue book Anarchist Manifesto

Anarchist Manifesto (1850)

Truth, Intelligence, Mathematics

“Interpretation is as improvisation as improvising from silence is. It is just a different way of looking at it. When you improvise form interpretation you have certain dramatic ideas, you have a certain structure. But you know that everything that is in that is relative and flexible. Even pitch can be a matter of interpretation. Rhythm is relative.”

Hilary Hahn (1979) American violinist

Why Violinist Hilary Hahn Will Never Just Stick to the Classical Repertoire (2012)

Way, Idea, Silence

“People think of him [Caligula] as a revolutionary or a figure of fun or a madman. There are so many aspects to him that we know really little about him, just the information that was given to us through a historian, a Roman historian called Suetonius, and he was from the other side of the family, so Suetonius paints Caligula as a very wicked madman, and that's the only reason that Suetonius considers why he did so many, on the face of it, crazy things. My interpretation of the character is not quite like that.”

Malcolm McDowell (1943) English actor

As quoted in A Documentary on the Making of Gore Vidal's Caligula [documentary] (1981), Cinemedia West Corporation

People, Family, Thinking, Painting

“The church and civilization are antipodal; one means authority, the other freedom; one means conservatism, the other progress; one means the rights of God as interpreted by the priesthood, the other the rights of humanity as interpreted by humanity. Civilization advances by free thought, free speech, free men.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898) American abolitionist, writer

Source: Woman, Church and State (1893), p. 540 as quoted in K. M. Talreja, Holy Vedas and Holy Bible: A Comparative Study https://books.google.com/books?id=9qkoAAAAYAAJ, New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan, 2000

Men, God, Freedom

“Whatever the apparent aim of the artist, he is called upon first to move the spectator, after having been himself struck by a design or color composition which may or may not have a relation to natural objects. His predilections, his preferences, crystallize afterwards in the choice of means to interpret those natural objects; these means are always, obligingly, of imaginary essence.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Quote of Zadkine from New York, early 1944; as cited in: Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 429
1940 - 1960

Color, Nature

“To draw a bright line from the founders to the Civil War has become one of the most difficult interpretative tasks confronting American historians, if only because we confront, on the one hand, truculent bands of neo-Confederates who struggle to disguise the fatal corruption of the Confederate rebellion in modern libertarian garb, and, on the other, the brigades of neo-Progressives who have been only too happy to sunder the founders from emancipation in order to subvert any notion that an 18th-century Constitution still has viability after being crisped up in the flames of the Civil War. What both neo- camps ignore is how hugely the accomplishment of the founders—whether in the secular language of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton or the sacred language of the Awakeners—represented a decisive break with all previous notions of human political organization. The achievement of Lincoln was to carry that break relentlessly forward against its oldest foe. The achievement of our times—if there will be one to write about—will depend largely on how we resist the newer, more subtle, forms of dehumanization which now, like the tireless tide, creep all around us again.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, The Logic of Liberty (2014)

War, Happiness, Decision, Time

Quotes about interpretation page 7

Quotes about interpretation
page 7