Misreading Quotes

“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.”

“Meanings with no purpose are useful for meaningless debates on what the "meaner" meant. And that's what #politics is all about - misreading.”

“Every reading is a misreading.”

“He shackled her with his hands, the press of his mouth ceaseless in its demands. She couldn't move, couldn't see, could barely breathe. Giving herself over to the fact that this was actually happening, that she wasn't misreading every cue in her stupid life, she ran her hands over the planes of his chest and settled more firmly against him.”

“Each culture is different. Each species is unique. That presents challenges to the warrior, who often must ascertain from limited clues the strategy, goals, and tactics of an opponent.But the danger of misreading an opponent is sometimes even greater in politics. There, one seldom has the clearness of weapons activation or troop movement to warn of impending danger. Often, the only indication of conflict is when the battle has already begun.”

“Existentialism is commonly associated with Left-Bank Parisian cafes and the ‘family’ of philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir who gathered there in the years immediately following the liberation of Paris at the end of World War II. One imagines offbeat, avant-garde intellectuals, attached to their cigarettes, listening to jazz as they hotly debate the implications of their new-found political and artistic liberty. The mood is one of enthusiasm, creativity, anguished self-analysis, and freedom – always freedom.Though this reflects the image projected by the media of the day and doubtless captures the spirit of the time, it glosses over the philosophical significance of existentialist thought, packaging it as a cultural phenomenon of a certain historical period. That is perhaps the price paid by a manner of thinking so bent on doing philosophy concretely rather than in some abstract and timeless manner. The existentialists’ urge for contemporary relevance fired their social and political commitment. But it also linked them with the problems of their day and invited subsequent generations to view them as having the currency of yesterday’s news.Such is the misreading of existentialist thought that I hope to correct in this short volume. If it bears the marks of its post-war appearance, existentialism as a manner of doing philosophy and a way of addressing the issues that matter in people’s lives is at least as old as philosophy itself. It is as current as the human condition which it examines.”

“War has no longer the justification that it makes for the survival of the fittest”