Misinterpretation Quotes

Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it turns out to be not what they meant, other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

To give truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation.

No man … ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.

There's something advantageous about having people underestimate your intellect, insomuch as a lot of things are revealed to you. They assume you don't know what you're talking about, then all of a sudden, you do. And the next thing you know, you have information you wouldn't normally have.

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

When the sage points at the moon, all that the idiot sees is the finger.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

Because, as we know, almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough. This will be especially impressed on anyone who has written fantastic fiction. He will find reviewers, both favourable and hostile, reading into his stories all manner of allegorical meanings which he never intended. (Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own books have been so ingenious and interesting that I often wish I had thought of them myself.)

You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said 'Parking Fine.' So that was nice.

I think that there was a lot of fantasy projected onto me, and that resulted in a reappropriation and re-characterization of who I am.

It's dreadful what little things lead people to misunderstand each other.

one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.

Most of the things I do are misunderstood. Hey, after all, being misunderstood is the fate of all true geniuses, is it not?

Every innovation is misguidance, even if the people see it as something good.

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion.

Criticism sometimes is really praise, and praise sometimes slander.

[on Richard Wagner] A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.

Modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.

I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn't, But you thought you would.