Misreading Quotes

• Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, of course, lays out the delegated, enumerated, and therefore limited powers of Congress. Only through a deliberate misreading of the general welfare and commerce clauses of the Constitution has the federal government been allowed to overreach its authority and extend its tendrils into every corner of civil society.

  Ed Crane

  Government, Constitution, Welfare

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• I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence.

  Harold Bloom

  Successful, Thinking, Greek

  "Divine (mis)readings". Interview with Harvey Blume, archive.boston.com. November 13, 2005.

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• In a language as idiomatically stressed as English, opportunities for misreadings are bound to arise. By a mere backward movement of stress, a verb can become a noun, an act a thing. To refuse, to insist on saying no to what you believe is wrong, becomes at a stroke refuse, an insurmountable pile of garbage.

  Ian Mcewan

  Stress, Believe, Opportunity

  Ian McEwan (1999). “Amsterdam”

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• We misread the Fifth Amendment [of Constitution] and have been misreading it for the past three decades.

  Joe Biden

  Past, Fifth Amendment, Three

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Kant argued that, where nature could be considered beautiful in her acts of destruction, human violence appeared instead as monstrous. However, a misreading of Kant in Romantic philosophy led to the idealization of the murderer as a sublime genius that has colored constructions of that criminal figure ever since.

  Richard Marshall

  Beautiful, Philosophy, Sublime

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I think it's a misreading of Dostoevsky to think of him as a programmatic theist. He's actually much closer to someone like William James. He's actually a pragmatist.

  Will Self

  Thinking, Pragmatists, Theist

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Los Angeles had no culture of its own, just a large collection of misreadings of the artistic histories of other, proper cities.

  Warren Ellis

  Cities, Culture, Artistic

  Warren Ellis (2013). “Dead Pig Collector”, p.5, Macmillan

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• Studios felt like Blu-ray was going to be the next panacea, and so they dumped the prices (of traditional DVDs) and devalued the product. That's a misreading of consumer behavior as well as a misreading of the economic environment.

  Bill Mechanic

  Dvds, Next, Rays

  Source: www.thewrap.com

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• Misreading is a big part of reading, the way in which the level of attention you're paying can lead to some interesting residue.

  Brian Evenson

  Reading, Interesting, Attention

  "5x5: Brian Evenson". Interview with Matt Bell, logger.believermag.com. July 10, 2014.

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• I believe that the creative impulse is natural in all human beings, and that it is particularly powerful in children unless it is suppressed. Consequently, one is behaving normally and instinctively and healthily when one is creating - literature, art, music, or whatever. An excellent cook is also creative! I am disturbed that a natural human inclination [creative work] should, by some Freudian turn of phrase, be considered compulsive - perhaps even pathological. To me this is a complete misreading of the human enterprise. One should also enjoy one's work, and look forward to it daily.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Art, Children, Powerful

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• Success requires a persistent misreading of the odds.

  Tom Peters

  Odds, Persistent

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• But, in the end, the books that surround me are the books that made me, through my reading (and misreading) of them; they fall in piles on my desk, they stack behind me on my shelves, they surprise me every time I look for one and find ten more I had forgotten about. I love their covers, their weight and their substance. And like the child I was, with the key to the world that reading gave me, it is still exciting for me to find a new book, open it at the first page and plunge in, head first, heart deep.

  Ramona Koval

  Education, Children, Book

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• I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of the miracle is here, among us. The eternal as an idea is much less preposterous than time, and this very fact should seize our attention.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Eye, Thinking, Ideas

  "The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought". Book by Marilynne Robinson, 1998.

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