140 Interpretation Quotes

Following is our list of interpretation quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about open to interpretation.

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Famous Interpretation Quotes

Through interpretation, understanding; through understanding, appreciation; through appreciation, protection. — Freeman Tilden

We not only interpret the character of events... we may also interpret our interpretations. — Kenneth Burke

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. — Friedrich Nietzsche

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation. — Walter Benjamin

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

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

There are no facts, only interpretations. - Friedrich Nietzsche

There are no facts, only interpretations. — Friedrich Nietzsche

If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal. — Paul Ricoeur

Changing your interpretation of your past is often just as good as changing your past. — Naval Ravikant

Information is everywhere but its meaning is created by the observer that interprets it. Meaning is relative and there is no objective, over-arching meaning. — Naval Ravikant

Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret. — Camille Pissarro

Induction for deduction, with a view to construction. — Auguste Comte

The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. — Sigmund Freud

The prediction comes after the explanation. — Naval Ravikant

To understand is to invent. — Jean Piaget

Short Interpretation Quotes

  • Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible. — Karl Barth
  • I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts. — John Locke
  • Rules are for the obidience of fools and interpretations of smart men. — Colin Chapman
  • The strengthening of our statehood is, at times, deliberately interpreted as authoritarianism. — Vladimir Putin
  • Dancing is a vertical interpretation of a horizontal intention. — Fred Astaire
  • Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. — Sigmund Freud
  • A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics. — Fred Hoyle
  • The state reserves the right to be the sole interpreter of the needs of society. — Benito Mussolini
  • Poor conceited humanity! Interpreters of God indeed. — Paul Laurence Dunbar
  • Geography is destiny, and history is its interpreter. — Tim Marshall

Interpretation Image Quotes

Interpretation quote A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

Wrong Interpretation Quotes

If I have taken the word, by any reason, it has been because I think it is grave to kill men, under the pretext that they are mistaken on the interpretation of some point, for we know that even the chosen ones are not exempt from sometimes being wrong. — Michael Servetus

Your ego is an avid interpreter. It is so quick to interpret events as 'bad' or 'good,' 'wrong' or 'right.' It never fails to see 'the little picture. — Robert Holden

The practice. Muscles do not interpret right or wrong just familiarity. Through repetition we begin to make what is unfamiliar our own — Jeff Allen

Interpretation quote The Maxim, "Nothing but perfection", may be spelled "Paralysis".
The Maxim, "Nothing but perfection", may be spelled "Paralysis".

I will come out with my interpretation. If I'm wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of history, part of the give and take. — Oliver Stone

Intuition is not infallible; it only seems to be the truth. It is a message which we may interpret wrongly. — Christina Stead

I am not that thrilled about the way our records sound anyway. Don't get me wrong, I work hard on them and I want them to sound fantastic but I'm happy to have another interpretation of them anyway. — Wayne Coyne

Interpretation quote There are no facts, only interpretations.
There are no facts, only interpretations.

You will find a blissfulness which contains in it sadness also, because that sadness gives it depth. Watch Buddha's statue - blissful, but still sad. The very word sad gives you wrong connotations - that something is wrong. This is your interpretation. To me, life in its totality is good. — Osho

They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end. — Jhumpa Lahiri

When you have a director who has work you can identify from the past, it gives you some reference point as to what their interpretation of the story might be, and how that might jibe, right or wrong, with how you see it. But with a first-time director, you don't really know where you're at. — Greg Kinnear

The actors in Britain are incredible, and I didn't appreciate that until I got there. They interpret your words and you realize how deliberate and thoughtful they are. There are great American actors, too, don't get me wrong, but the technique that British actors have is something really special. — Frank Spotnitz

Open To Interpretation Quotes

All my lyrics are open to interpretation by the individual and imply many different meanings, therefore their relevance is purely subjective. — Ian Curtis

If any syllable that I utter might be interpreted in 13,000 different ways, then the best way for me to never be tarred and feathered is to never open my mouth. So the next time that someone calls on me for an opinion, you know what? I won't say a thing. — Gad Saad

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

Interpretation quote If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.
If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.

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

I always like to leave art and music open to interpretation. — Dan Reynolds

There was a time when meanings were focused and reality could be fixed; when that sort of belief disappeared, things became uncertain and open to interpretation. — Bridget Riley

People should support equality because of their religion not despite it. These are the values that openness, inclusion, diversity promote. And they're directly opposed to the kind of enforced closet of certain interpretations of religion. — Jay Michaelson

Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk, innocent. Thousands of words, myriad interpretations, are only to free you from obstructions. If you want to know the undying person in the hut, don't separate from this skin bag here and now. — Shitou Xiqian

Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation. — Michael Shermer

Finally I started really opening up as a songwriter and an interpreter and taking songs from all kind of genres and stripping them down to just lyrics and the story inside the lyrics, and trying to make them really mine. — Lizz Wright

Art Interpretation Quotes

The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something and then translate how I see it. — Ellsworth Kelly

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. — Marcel Duchamp

Black and white is a very minimalist art form and unlike color photographs does not pretend to mimic the world in a manner similar to the way the human eye might perceive... Black and white is essentially an abstract way to interpret and transform what one might refer to as reality. — Roger Ballen

The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world. — Elliot W. Eisner

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

Ideally, brewers interpret history, and through science they create art. — Don Spencer

I like keeping my work so open that it can be interpreted on different levels. Art can't be compared with journalism; it can't discuss concrete issues. — Mona Hatoum

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

The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay ... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. — Matthew Arnold

Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh. — Allen Ginsberg

Dream Interpretation Quotes

The ultimate lesson of The Interpretation of Dreams: reality is for those who cannot sustain the dream. — Slavoj Žižek

My whole life long I have done nothing but interpret my dreams of ultimate masculinity, and draw them. — Tom of Finland

There is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and ... if that procedure is employed, every dream reveals itself as a psychical structure which has a meaning and which can be inserted at an assignable point in the mental activities of waking life. — Sigmund Freud

We are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams... we are also more inteligent, wiser and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake. — Erich Fromm

One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric. — Evelyn Waugh

Art is life's dream interpretation. — Otto Rank

A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul. — Erich Fromm

For those who believe executive branch officials will voluntarily interpret their surveillance authorities with restraint, I believe it is more likely that I will achieve my life-long dream of playing in the NBA. — Ron Wyden

To be a footballer means being a privileged interpreter of the feelings and dreams of thousands of people. — Cesar Luis Menotti

Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Interpretation Of Dreams Quotes

Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain. — Jonathan Swift

The interpretation of dreams is a great art. — Paracelsus

The overintellectualization of surrealism can be a bromide. A dream interpreted is a deflated dream. — Graham Joyce

It is all nonsense, to be sure; and so much the greater nonsense inasmuch as the true interpretation of many dreams - not by any means of all dreams - moves, it may be said, in the opposite direction to the method of psycho-analysis. — Arthur Machen

When you just get fantasy stories that are about fairies or goblins, I just don't care. I'm never going to meet a goblin, it doesn't mean anything to me. So my definition of fantasy is very broad, it's anything to do with memory, or dreams, or ways of interpreting or making sense of the world. — Dave McKean

You came so that you could learn about your dreams," said the old woman. "And dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he has said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it is only you who can understand. — Paulo Coelho

By the time she had interpreted Harry's dreams at the top of her voice (all of which, even the ones that involved eating porridge, apparently foretold a gruesome and early death), he was feeling much less sympathetic toward her. — J. K. Rowling

Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. It introduced the notion that there existed certain predictable and identifiable processes by which dreams were formed. — Henry Reed

Hugh Lynn Cayce, Edgar Cayce's son, is quoted as saying, The best interpretation of a dream is one you apply. — Henry Reed

For [Sigmund ] Freud, the manifest dream, that is that which we remember after waking,is like a code message, that can be interpreted, provided the right key is avail-able, for example the method of free association. — Erich Fromm

Music Interpretation Quotes

I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition. — Henri Matisse

Conducting" is when you draw "designs" in the nowhere-with a stick, or with your hands-which are interpreted as "instructional messages" by guys wearing bow ties who wish they were fishing. — Frank Zappa

Music does not live until it's interpreted - with all of its flaws, mannerisms, etc. It needs to be incarnated to be something. — Helene Grimaud

Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness. — Robert Bringhurst

Maybe it's just me being lazy but I just don't like describing my music or style or anything, I just like letting people interpret it. — BØRNS

Too many students who are technically quite far advanced do not properly interpret the technically less difficult pieces they play, because they regard them as beneath serious consideration. This is a fundamental error in musical taste and judgment. — Leopold Auer

I like to create the music I hear in my interior. As a conductor, you have the ability to squeeze the sounds and interpretation you asked for from 50 to 80 people. — Eberhard Weber

There is much modern music that is better adapted to a wind combination than to a string, although for obvious reasons originally scored for an orchestra. If in such cases the interpretation is equal to the composition the balance of a wind combination is more satisfying. — John Philip Sousa

In classical music, love is based on bitin' -- imitation. It's not based on interpretation. A jazz musician, if he plays someone else's song, has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement. — Todd Boyd

A good interpreter can take a piece of bad music and make it sound pretty decent, while a bad interpreter can take good music and make it sound cheap. I can tell that some people have a bad taste, and unlike on the piano, they smear around a lot, that is bad taste. — Ruggiero Ricci

Against Interpretation Quotes

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. — Paul Ricoeur

Arlen Specter is the man who voted in favor of Bill Clinton during impeachment, voted against Robert Bork for the Supreme Court, voted against school choice for the District of Columbia, endorses an absolutist interpretation of abortion rights. He is bright and he is tough and he belongs elsewhere. — William F. Buckley, Jr.

An aggravating feature of this post-9/11 atmosphere is to cast suspicions on Muslims and on Islam as a religion that is interpreted as either inherently violent or death-oriented, with a particular animus against America and Americans. — Richard A. Falk

St. Augustine explicitly warns against a very narrow perspective that will put our faith at risk of looking ridiculous. If you step back from that one narrow interpretation, what the Bible describes is very consistent with the Big Bang. — Richard Dawkins

It is as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog. — George Eliot

Since the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property. — Tim LaHaye

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

In line with international law, only the U.N. Security Council could sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other pretext or method which might be used to justify the use of force against an independent sovereign state are inadmissible and can only be interpreted as an aggression. — Vladimir Putin

I argue against literal interpretation of religious doctrines. Religions make progress when they emancipate themselves from literalism, and take their doctrinal statements to be metaphors or allegories. — Philip Kitcher

The marquee scrolling across our minds trying to reinterpret life reads: "God-Against-Us." This becomes the dominant lens through which our flesh interprets life. We no longer give our loving Father the benefit of the doubt. Instead, we view every event as conclusive proof that God is against us. — James MacDonald

People Writing About Interpretation

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Read quotes by Naval Ravikant

Naval Ravikant
quotes on money, happiness and life

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Read quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche
quotes on god, love and morality

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Read quotes by Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud
quotes on dreams, marriage and civilization

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Read quotes by Kenneth Burke

Kenneth Burke
quotes on ethics, knowledge and leadership

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Read quotes by Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin
quotes on art, history and photography

143 1292
Read quotes by Antonin Scalia

Antonin Scalia
quotes on constitution, character and second amendment

79 13633

More Interpretation Quotes

Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it. — Ella Baker

It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one. — Antonin Scalia

For me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree. Therefore, they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect. — Mahatma Gandhi

Sometimes you search so hard for words. You look for a way to interpret the language of this heart and the unspoken bond you feel. But in the end you are left with nothing but silence. And deep down you hope it’s understood. — Yasmin Mogahed

As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I'll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I'll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can". — John Muir

I do not write for this generation. I am writing for other ages. If this could read me, they would burn my books, the work of my whole life. On the other hand, the generation which interprets these writings will be an educated generation; they will understand me and say: Not all were asleep in the nighttime of our grandparents. — Jose Rizal

Secularism is a term interpreted in many different ways by different people. For me, it has always been something very simple - putting India First — Narendra Modi

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. — George Eliot

No man is hurt but by himself. ...Literally by how he interprets what happens to him. If he focusses on how it could have been better, he will be hurt. If he focusses on how it could have been worse, he will be happy. The same is true for women too. — Diogenes

we can't be creative if we refuse to be confused. Change always starts with confusion; cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for what's new. Great ideas and inventions miraculously appear in the space of not knowing. — Margaret J. Wheatley

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. — John F. Kennedy

Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts. (Leonard Shelby, Memento) — Christopher Nolan

As you think, so you become.....Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren't there. — Epictetus

But, I don't think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can't create his own Interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that's written, he becomes mechanical; he has no freedom. — Buddy Rich

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer. — Marlon Brando

I think that my interpretation of Italian was a lot more southern than what my husband cooks. You know, I grew up in Queens and in Brooklyn, and we - really, it's more southern. It's Naples and Sicily. It's heavier. It's over-spiced. And like most Americans, I thought spaghetti and meatballs was genius. — Debi Mazar

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

We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond. — Mark Manson

Islam will be what Muslims make of it. And it is the sum total of the interpretation that Muslims give to it. — Maajid Nawaz

The gospel must be preached afresh and told in new ways to each generation, since every generation has its own unique questions. The gospel must constantly be forwarded to a new address, because the recipient is repeatedly changing his place of address. — Helmut Thielicke

Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn't understand you at all. — Aleister Crowley

Schizophrenics have a whole lot of trouble telling the level of abstraction of a story. They're always biased in the direction of interpreting things more concretely than is actually the case. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Success of bitcoin and the exchanges that deal in it could be interpreted by some to mean the demise of central banks, Wall Street, and the Washington insiders who trade on inside information and market manipulation. — Max Keiser

From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one - absolutely no one - is above the law. — Leon Jaworski

From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one - absolutely no one - is above the law. — Leon Jaworski

I believe that every man can multiply his own ability by almost constant wordless realization of his unity with his Source. I have, myself, made that feeling so much a part of me that I actually feel myself to be an extension of the Source; that my works are not my own, but interpretations of this Source. — Walter Russell

I became, suddenly, not just a Muslim in faith. I became a Muslim in politics. Somebody whose politics were pre-defined by one interpretation of Islam. — Maajid Nawaz

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature. — Paul De Man

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

If the artist is happy with the work they’re creating and the viewer is enlivened by the work they’re experiencing, it doesn’t matter if they see it in the same way. — Rick Rubin

The stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction. — Rem Koolhaas

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