Testimony demands to be interpreted because of the dialectic of meaning and event that traverses it.

The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism.

Narrative identity takes part in the story's movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder.

Wisdom finds its literary expression in wisdom literature.

If the Resurrection is resurrection from the dead, all hope and freedom are in spite of death.

The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct.

Although there has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity, the hermeneutic question today seems to us a new one.

This is perhaps the most profound meaning of the book of Job, the best example of wisdom.

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.

First, it is not unimportant that the legislative texts of the Old Testament are placed in the mouth of Moses and within the narrative framework of the sojourn at Sinai.

There is no shorter path for joining a neutral existential anthropology, according to philosophy, with the existential decision before God, according to the Bible.

The text is a limited field of possible constructions.

The Law is one aspect of a much more concrete and encompassing relation than the relation between commanding and obeying that characterizes the imperative.

There has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity because Christianity proceeds from a proclamation.

For my own part, I abandon the ethics of duty to the Hegelian critique with no regrets; it would appear to me, indeed, to have been correctly characterized by Hegel as an abstract thought, as a thought of understanding.

Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence.

So long as the New Testament served to decipher the Old, it was taken as an absolute norm.

Testimony gives something to be interpreted.

Testimony should be a philosophical problem and not limited to legal or historical contexts where it refers to the account of a witness who reports what he has seen.

What must be the nature of the world... if human beings are able to introduce changes into it?

Hope, insofar as it is hope of resurrection, is the living contradiction of what it proceeds from and what is placed under the sign of the Cross and death.

But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny.

On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.

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.

Ordinary language carries with it conditions of meaning which it is easy to recognize by classifying the contexts in which the expression is employed in a meaningful manner.

Man is this plural and collective unity in which the unity of destination and the differences of destinies are to be understood through each other.

The narrative constructs the identity of the character, what can be called his or her narrative identity, in constructing that of the story told. It is the identity of the story that makes the identity of the character.

Testimony demands to be interpreted because of the dialectic of meaning and event that traverses it.

On a cosmic scale our life is insignificant yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.

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.

There was a wise old owl who sat in a tree The less he spoke the more he heard The more he heard the less he spoke Why can't we be like that wise old owl in the tree? Speech must die to serve that which is spoken.

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

In common use almost every word has many shades of meaning, and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context.

It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.

My life has been a continuous fulfillment of dreams. It appears that everything I saw and did has a new, and perhaps, more significant meaning, every time I see it. The earth is good. It is a privilege to live thereon.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.

But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence.

The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slowly moving, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades. It is a river of grass.

Alabama citizens, like the vast majority of Americans, respect and value the meaning of decency, and appreciate public institutions that reflect the common values of our society.

It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators.

I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.

She made the decision that her existence had lost its meaning. And you cannot judge that.

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

All of us want to have meaning in our lives and want to feel like we're doing something that makes a difference. I believe we're doing that in the Justice Department.