Quotations about:
    interpretation


Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.


Study the historian before you begin to study the facts. This is, after all, not very abstruse. It is what is already done by the intelligent undergraduate who, when recommended to read a work by that great scholar Jones of St. Jude’s, goes round to a friend at St. Jude’s to ask what sort of chap Jones is, and what bees he has in his bonnet. When you read a work of history, always listen out for the buzzing. If you can detect none, either you are tone deaf or your historian is a dull dog. The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation.

E. H. Carr (1892-1982) British historian, journalist, international relations theorist [Edward Hallett "Ted" Carr]
What Is History?, ch. 1 (1961)
    (Source)
 
Added on 13-Nov-23 | Last updated 13-Nov-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Carr, E. H.

There’s many a slip betwixt the observation and the conclusion.

Austin O'Malley
Austin O'Malley (1858-1932) American ophthalmologist, professor of literature, aphorist
Keystones of Thought (1914)
    (Source)
 
Added on 11-Oct-23 | Last updated 11-Oct-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by O'Malley, Austin

History, like perspective, needs distance. Facts that are too abundantly attested cease, in some degree, to be malleable.

[L’histoire a besoin de lointain, comme la perspective. Les faits et les événements trop attestés ont, en quelque sorte, cessé d’être malléables.]

Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist, philosopher, essayist, poet
Pensées [Thoughts], ch. 23 “Des Qualités de l’Écrivain et des Compositions Littéraires [On Writers and Literature],” ¶ 119 (1850 ed.) [tr. Lyttelton (1899), ch. 22, ¶ 52]
    (Source)

(Source (French)). Alternate translations:

History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested, cease, in some sort, to be malleable.
[tr. Attwell (1896), ¶ 356]

History, like perspective, has need of distance.
[tr. Auster (1983), 1801]

 
Added on 7-Aug-23 | Last updated 7-Aug-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Joubert, Joseph

History may be used to support any conclusion, according to the emphasis of our conscious or unconscious principle of selection.

Lowes Dickinson
G. Lowes Dickinson (1862-1932) British political scientist and philosopher [Goldsworthy "Goldie" Lowes Dickinson]
Religion: A Criticism and a Forecast, ch. 1 “Ecclesiasticism” (1906)
    (Source)
 
Added on 12-Jun-23 | Last updated 12-Jun-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Dickinson, Lowes

For the world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding (which has been done hitherto), but the understanding to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world, as it is in fact.

[Neque enim arctandus est mundus ad angustias intellectus (quod adhue factum est), sed expandendus intellectus et laxandus ad mundi imaginem recipiendam, qualis invenitur.]

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
The Great Instauration, “Parsceve ad Historiam,” “Aphorisms on the Composition of the Primary History,” #4 (1620)
    (Source)
 
Added on 30-Nov-22 | Last updated 30-Nov-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Bacon, Francis

A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.

Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) Russian film director, screenwriter, film theorist [Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский]
Sculpting in Time (1986) [tr. Hunter-Blair]
    (Source)
 
Added on 10-Nov-22 | Last updated 10-Nov-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by Tarkovsky, Andrei

Never try to convey your idea to the audience — it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.

Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) Russian film director, screenwriter, film theorist [Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский]
Sculpting in Time (1986) [tr. Hunter-Blair]
 
Added on 3-Oct-22 | Last updated 3-Oct-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Tarkovsky, Andrei

The relation between the artist and reality is an oblique one, and indeed there is no good art which is not consciously oblique. If you respect the reality of the world, you know that you can approach that reality only by indirect means.

Richard Wilbur
Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) American poet, literary translator
“The Bottles Become New, Too” (1953), Responses: Prose Pieces, 1953-1976 (1976)
    (Source)

Originally published in Quarterly Review of Literature, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1953).
 
Added on 4-Aug-22 | Last updated 4-Aug-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Wilbur, Richard

KEATING: When you read, don’t just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think.

Tom Schulman (b. 1951) American screenwriter, director
Dead Poets Society (1989)
    (Source)
 
Added on 17-Jun-22 | Last updated 17-Jun-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Schulman, Tom

In the popular imagination, the belief persists that history involves little more than reconstruction, a retelling of the past “as it actually was.” But historical understanding involves far more than mere empiricism; it demands a readiness to draw back from the facts to reflect on their significance and their interconnection.

Peter E Gordon
Peter E, Gordon (b. 1966) American intellectual historian
“Why Historical Analogy Matters,” New York Review of Books (7 Jan 2020)
    (Source)
 
Added on 24-Sep-21 | Last updated 24-Sep-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Gordon, Peter E.

Our task as historians is to make past conflicts live again; not to lament the verdict or to wish for a different one. It bewildered me when my old master A. F. Pribram, a very great historian, said in the nineteen-thirties: “It is still not decided whether the Habsburg monarchy could have found a solution for its national problems.” How can we decide about something that did not happen? Heaven knows, we have difficulty enough in deciding what did happen. Events decided that the Habsburgs had not found a solution for their national problems; that is all we know or need to know. Whenever I read the phrase: “whether so-and-so acted rightly must be left for historians to decide,” I close the book; the writer has moved from history to make-believe.

A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) British historian, journalist, broadcaster [Alan John Percivale Taylor]
Trouble Makers: Dissent Over Foreign Policy 1792-1939 (1957)
    (Source)
 
Added on 23-Aug-21 | Last updated 23-Aug-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Taylor, A. J. P.

History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.

A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) British historian, journalist, broadcaster [Alan John Percivale Taylor]
(Attributed)
 
Added on 14-Jun-21 | Last updated 14-Jun-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Taylor, A. J. P.

When I hear scientists say, “The data speak for themselves,” I cringe. Data never speak.

Andrew J. Hoffman (b. 1961) American environmental scientist, sustainable enterprise scholar
“Taking On Climate Skepticism as a Field of Study,” Interview by Felicity Barringer, New York Times (9 Apr 2011)
    (Source)
 
Added on 13-Apr-21 | Last updated 19-Apr-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Hoffman, Andrew J.

One does not go to the theater to see life and nature; one goes to see the particular way in which life and nature happen to look to a cultivated, imaginative and entertaining man who happens, in turn, to be a playwright.

George Jean Nathan (1892-1958) American editor and critic
The Critic and the Drama, ch. 2 (1922)
    (Source)
 
Added on 9-Nov-20 | Last updated 9-Nov-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Nathan, George Jean

Injustice often arises also through chicanery, that is, through an over-subtle and even fraudulent construction of the law. This it is that gave rise to the now familiar saw, “More law, less justice.”

[Existunt etiam saepe iniuriae calumnia quadam et nimis callida sed malitiosa iuris interpretatione. Ex quo illud “summum ius summa iniuria” factum est iam tritum sermone proverbium.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
De Officiis [On Duties; On Moral Duty; The Offices], Book 1, ch. 10 (1.10) / sec. 33 (44 BC) [tr. Miller (1913)]
    (Source)

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:


    But another great spring from which injuries arise, is some quirk or cavil, and an oversubtle and malicious interpretation of the laws; from whence that saying, "The height of justice is the height of roguery," is now become a daily and common proverb among us.
    [tr. Cockman (1699)]

    Injustice is often done by artful evasions, and from a too shrewd, but malicious interpretation of the laws. Hence the proverb, "the strictest justice is the greatest injury," has become quite familiar in conversation.
    [tr. McCartney (1798)]

    Very often wrongs arise through a quirk, and through a too artful but fraudulent construction of the law. Hence, "the rigour of law is the rigour of injustice," is a saying that has now passed into a proverb.
    [tr. Edmonds (1865)]

    There are, also, wrongs committed by a sort of chicanery, which consists in a too subtle, and thus fraudulent, interpretation of the right. Hence comes the saying: The extreme of right is the extreme of wrong.
    [tr. Peabody (1883)]

    A common form of injustice is chicanery, that is, an over-subtle, in fact a fraudulent construction of the law. Hence the hackneyed proverb: "The greatest right is the greatest wrong."
    [tr. Gardiner (1899)]

    A perversion of justice, some extremely clever but harmful interpretation of a statute, also is a frequent cause of wrongdoing. Hence we have the saying, "Extreme legality is the worst law," a proverb become a cliche by daily use.
    [tr. Edinger (1974)]

    See Terence.
 
Added on 26-Oct-20 | Last updated 11-Aug-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Cicero, Marcus Tullius

I have regarded you, not as a novelist, but as an historian; for it is my considered opinion, unshaken at 85, that records of fact are not history. They are only annals, which cannot become historical until the artist-poet-philosopher rescues them from the unintelligible chaos of their actual occurrence and arranges them in works of art.

When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to the authorities, but to your novels. They object that the people in your books never existed; that their deeds were never done and their sayings never uttered. I assure them that they were, except that Upton Sinclair individualized and expressed them better than they could have done, and arranged their experiences, which as they actually occurred were as unintelligible as pied type, in significant and intelligible order.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Letter to Upton Sinclair (12 Dec 1941)
 
Added on 24-Sep-20 | Last updated 24-Sep-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Shaw, George Bernard

The lesson of History is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

James A. Garfield (1831-1881) US President (1881), lawyer, lay preacher, educator
Letter to Professor Demmon (16 Dec 1871)
    (Source)
 
Added on 18-Sep-20 | Last updated 18-Sep-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Garfield, James A.

The Bible has been interpreted to justify such evil practices as, for example, slavery, the slaughter of prisoners of war, the sadistic murders of women believed to be witches, capital punishment for hundreds of offenses, polygamy, and cruelty to animals. It has been used to encourage belief in the grossest superstition and to discourage the free teaching of scientific truths. We must never forget that both good and evil flow from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism.

Steve Allen (1922-2000) American composer, entertainer, and wit.
More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality, Introduction (1993)
    (Source)
 
Added on 7-Aug-20 | Last updated 7-Aug-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Allen, Steve

An artist’s job is to make order out of chaos. You collect details, look for a pattern, and organize. You make sense out of senseless facts. You puzzle together bits of everything. You shuffle and reorganize. Collage. Montage. Assemble.

Chuck Palahniuk (b. 1962) American novelist and freelance journalist
Diary (2003)
 
Added on 27-May-20 | Last updated 27-May-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Palahniuk, Chuck

What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.

Chuck Palahniuk (b. 1962) American novelist and freelance journalist
Diary (2003)
 
Added on 19-May-20 | Last updated 19-May-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by Palahniuk, Chuck

A work of art does not answer questions: it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between their contradictory answers.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer, pianist
“A Sabbatical Report,” sec. 1, New York Times (24 Oct 1965)
    (Source)

Reprinted in The Infinite Variety of Music (1966)
 
Added on 8-May-20 | Last updated 8-May-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Bernstein, Leonard

There is no “True.” There are only ways of perceiving.

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French writer, novelist
Letter to Léon Hennique (3 Feb 1880) [tr. Steegmuller (1982)]
    (Source)
 
Added on 12-Mar-20 | Last updated 12-Mar-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Flaubert, Gustave

It should be quite unnecessary to point the moral; the right telling of the story should be sufficient. Do not moralize, but let the facts produce their own moral in the child’s mind.

Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Education and the Good Life, ch. 11 (1926)
    (Source)
 
Added on 14-Jul-17 | Last updated 14-Jul-17
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Russell, Bertrand

So you end up with divergent sects reading from subtly different versions of the same book — which in turn is a third-generation translation of something which might have been the original codification of an oral tradition — and all convinced that their interpretation overrides such minor obstacles as observable reality. Which still wouldn’t be a problem except that some of the readers think the books are an instruction manual rather than a set of educational parables, a blueprint instead of a metaphor.

Charles "Charlie" Stross (b. 1964) British writer
The Apocalypse Codex (2012)
    (Source)
 
Added on 2-May-17 | Last updated 2-May-17
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Stross, Charles

“What’s the play about?”
“Nobody seems to know.”
“What do the actors say it’s about?”
“They don’t know,” Susan said. She was as close to embarrassed as she gets.
“The actors don’t know what it’s about?”
“No.”
“How about the Director?”
“Lou says that a play is not required to be about anything.”
“And it runs how long?”
“Four and a half hours with an intermission.” Susan smiled encouragingly. “It’s very controversial,” she said.
“Excellent,” I said. “Maybe a fight will break out.”

Robert B. Parker (1932-2010) American writer
Walking Shadow (1994)
 
Added on 19-Apr-17 | Last updated 19-Apr-17
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Parker, Robert

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Gauguin - shut my eyes - wist_info quote

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) French painter [Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin]
(Attributed)
 
Added on 31-May-16 | Last updated 31-May-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Gauguin, Paul

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
 
Added on 1-Jun-15 | Last updated 1-Jun-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Adams, Douglas

To establish the facts is always in order, and is indeed the first duty of the historian; but to suppose that the facts, once established in all their fullness, will “speak for themselves” is an illusion.

Carl L. Becker (1873-1945) American historian
“Everyman His Own Historian” (3), speech, American Historical Association, Minneapolis (29 Dec 1931)
    (Source)
 
Added on 13-Jan-15 | Last updated 13-Jan-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Becker, Carl

Since history is not an objective reality, but only an imaginative reconstruction of vanished events, the pattern that appears useful or agreeable to one generation is never entirely so to the next.

Carl L. Becker (1873-1945) American historian
The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932)
    (Source)
 
Added on 16-Dec-14 | Last updated 16-Dec-14
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Becker, Carl

Books may preach when the author cannot, when the author may not, when the author dares not, yes, and which is more, when the author is not.

Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) English Puritan divine, writer
Heaven on Earth (1654)
 
Added on 10-Dec-14 | Last updated 10-Dec-14
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Brooks, Thomas

All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn’t your pet — it’s your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.

Joss Whedon (b. 1964) American screenwriter, author, producer [Joseph Hill Whedon]
“I Am Joss Wedon — AMA,” Reddit (10 Apr 2012)
    (Source)

On fan fiction and academic analysis.
 
Added on 15-Oct-14 | Last updated 15-Oct-14
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Whedon, Joss

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it’s just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

David Sedaris (b. 1956) American humorist, comedian, author
Interview, Louisville Courier-Journal (5 Jun 2005)
 
Added on 3-Apr-14 | Last updated 31-Oct-14
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Sedaris, David

There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally; in every interpretation we must pass between Scylla and Charybdis; and I certainly do not wish to add to the barrels of ink that have been spent in logging the route. As nearly as we can, we must put ourselves in the place of those who uttered the words, and try to divine how they would have dealt with the unforeseen situation; and, although their words are by far the most decisive evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means final.

Learned Hand (1872-1961) American jurist
Guiseppi v. Walling, 144 F.2d 608, 624 (2d Cir. 1944) [concurring]
    (Source)
 
Added on 29-Aug-07 | Last updated 25-Jan-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Hand, Learned

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.

Epictetus (c.55-c.135) Greek (Phrygian) Stoic philosopher
The Enchiridion (c. 135)

Alt. trans.: "We suffer not from the events in our lives, but from our judgment about them."
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 5-Jul-17
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Epictetus

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.

[Todos sabemos que el arte no es verdad. El arte es una mentira que no acerca a la verdad, al menos, a aquella verdad que se nos da para entendar.]

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish painter and sculptor
“Picasso Speaks: A Statement by the Artist,” interview with Marius de Zayas, The Arts (May 1923)
    (Source)

Discussing cubism. Translated in Quote Magazine (21 Sep 1958) as "Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth."
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 10-Apr-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Picasso, Pablo