Construed Quotes

#1. ...the state should support art,construed not as amusement but as one of the chief carriers of civilization.

Samuel Lipman

#2. This is solute, which will cause every animal killed by Halo action to instantly decay into component molecules. This will avert an ecological miasma. But it could also be construed as a way to hide a tremendous crime from later investigators.

Greg Bear

#3. What I refuse to face within myself will meet me in the exterior world through you, not as you are, but as I have so construed you.

James Hollis

#4. [T]he categories of intentionality are nothing more nor less than the metalinguistic categories in terms of which we talk epistemically about overt speech as they appear in the framework of thoughts construed on the model of over speech.

Wilfrid Sellars

#5. There is nothing in anything that I have ever written that could be reasonably construed as an incitement to violence against anyone.

Robert Spencer

#6. Can an absence of action be construed as a negative action?

Tamar Cohen

#7. It wasn't that they participated in criminal activity. It was that their activities could be construed as criminal.

Kristen Ashley

#8. The good life is best construed as a matrix that includes happiness, occasional sadness, a sense of purpose, playfulness, and psychological flexibility, as well autonomy, mastery, and belonging.

Robert Biswas-Diener

#9. I think the thing about the Internet is that it has so many characteristics that can be easily construed to be similar or almost identical to print that it can be misleading.

Khoi Vinh

#10. That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience.

John Adams

#11. On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?

Thomas Jefferson

#12. I have been in the entertainment business some forty-three years, and I have never said anything detrimental or anything that might be construed as belittling any race or religion. I would be a sucker to do so because you can't insult the customers.

W.C. Fields

#13. For an act may be wrong judged purely by itself, but when the motive that prompted the act is understood, it is construed differently. I lay it down as an axiom, that only that is criminal in the sight of God where crime is meditated.

Elizabeth Keckley

#14. I wondered what one wore to visit a vampire. The chic red sweater set didn't go so well with my darker hair, and I was afraid it might be construed as a flirtatious invitation to color me bloodier.

Karen Marie Moning

#15. In my own humorless state I failed to see anything except what I construed as certain tragic similarities between Gatsby and myself.

Donna Tartt

#16. My interest in spiritual approaches to medical problems should not, however, be construed as a dismissal of science; rather it is a call for more integrated relations between science and humanities in order to transform medical cultures.

Ann Cvetkovich

#17. Women have routinely been punished and intimidated for attempting that most simple of freedoms, taking a walk, because their walking and indeed their very beings have been construed as inevitably, continually sexual in those societies concerned with controlling women's sexuality.

Rebecca Solnit

#18. I'd like to apologize in advance for anything I may say or do that could be construed as offensive as I slowly go nuts!

Jack O'Neill

#19. A challenge to the right of Israel to exist can be construed as a challenge to the existence of the Jewish people only if one believes that Israel alone keeps the Jewish people alive or that all Jews invest their sense of perpetuity in the state of Israel in its current or traditional forms.

Judith Butler

#20. It could be construed that the reason I wouldn't wish to live in England is the immigration explosion. And that's not true at all.

Morrissey

#21. Technology, including Zaadz, will allow us to evade the jerks far more than we could before. The technology-based social responsibility movement, broadly construed, will allow us to return to some extent to the moral monitoring of small villages.

Michael Strong

#22. I don't think people love me. They love versions of me I have spun for them, versions of me they have construed in their minds. The easy versions of me, the easy parts of me to love.

Unknown

#23. Hot damn. Cue the violins and happy cartoon bunnies. I was in the middle of a Disney moment. Because this guy was gorgeous. And we were standing so close to each other. If he hadn't been holding onto a barely contained rage directed at yours truly, it could have almost been construed as romantic.

A Meredith Walters

#24. How often-even before we began-have we declared a task 'impossible'? And how often have we construed a picture of ourselves as being inadequate? ... A great deal depends upon the thought patterns we choose and on the persistence with which we affirm them.

Piero Ferrucci

#25. What we lack is a basic willingness to see literature as providing some kind of necessary foundation. Our society still expects schools to prepare their charges for work only and not for life. As such, literature is construed as at best technically useless and random, at worst socially disruptive.

Gwee Li Sui

#26. We have not sought this conflict; we have sought too long to avoid it; our forbearance has been construed into weakness, our magnanimity into fear, until the vindication of our manhood, as well as the defence of our rights, is required at our hands.

Robert Toombs

#27. Being nice should never be perceived as being weak. It's not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of courtesy, manners, grace, a woman's ability to make everyone ... feel at home, and it should never be construed as weakness ...

Benazir Bhutto

#28. Psychologically experienced consciousness is therefore no longer pure consciousness; construed Objectively in this way, consciousness itself becomes something transcendent, becomes an event in that spatial world which appears, by virtue of consciousness, to be transcendent.

Edmund Husserl

#29. Giving myself a pep talk, I peeked into my pants and told my vagina that even though what was about to happen to her was construed by the devil himself, I still loved her and hopefully, such actions would bring great rewards in the future.

Meghan Quinn

#30. It should go without saying that even the most narrowly construed eminent-domain power would violate individual rights. Either a person owns his legitimately acquired property or he does not.

Sheldon Richman

#31. Although much of the media have their antennae out to pick up anything that might be construed as racism against blacks, they resolutely ignore even the most blatant racism by blacks against others.

Thomas Sowell

#32. An Act of Dissent is simply a way of saying, 'No, I do not accept this and, as my silence may be construed as acquiescence, I would like to make a small gesture to indicate that you can all go fuck yourselves.

Mark Thomas

#33. Lie really could be construed as the art of illusion by some people.

Heather Graham

#34. It took him almost a half hour to write a message of only five lines. It took yet another fifteen minutes to delete whatever might be construed as ambiguity, desperation, or references to a history that he no longer had access to. Finally, he took a deep breath and hit 'send'.

Joakim Zander

#35. Of course women's walking is often construed as performance rather than transport, with the implication that women walk not to see but to be seen, not for their own experience but for that of a male audience, which means that they are asking for whatever attention they receive.

Rebecca Solnit

#36. The powers contained in a constitution ... ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.

Alexander Hamilton

#37. social phobics are better at picking up on subtle social cues than other people are - but they tend to overinterpret anything that could be construed as a negative reaction.

Scott Stossel

#38. The construction applied ... to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power ... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.

Thomas Jefferson

#39. If inequalities of taxable wealth backing up a government service are construed as denying equality before the law, then there is no solution but to have every government service whatever financed out of Washington.

M. Stanton Evans

#40. Almost everything can be construed as sexual harassment depending upon the way it is said. One general rule of thumb is to think of your female co-workers as you would your sister. Yes, she is a woman. No, she is not a sexual object. Yes, your parents probably like her more than they like you.

Linda Sunshine

#41. The days of the Mosaic creation are not to be strictly construed as implying the same length of time which is at present occupied by a single revolution of our globe, but PERIODS of a much longer extent.

William Buckland

#42. Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.

Thomas Jefferson

#43. The halcyon days of childhood, a time when everything lay open before him, when the most minor episodes could be construed as events and every chance encounter ... gave rise to fresh insights.

Ivan Klima

#44. ...man is a part of nature and what he does is natural and can't be construed as tampering.

Robert Shea

#45. The only sure way of avoiding these evils [vanity and boasting] is never to speak of yourself at all. But when, historically, youare obliged to mention yourself, take care not to drop one single word that can directly or indirectly be construed as fishing for applause.

Lord Chesterfield

#46. Happiness when sustained too long in print can rightly be construed as sappiness ...

Millard Kaufman

#47. Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#48. Construed as a means instead of an end, history is the weapon with which we defend the future against the past.

Lewis H. Lapham

#49. In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be construed as indifference.

Ambrose Bierce

#50. Depression was like wearing tinted glasses and looking through them changed one's perception dramatically. A fancy new house could be construed as a bunch of boards nailed together.

A. J. Gallant

#51. The constitution shall never be construed ... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

Alexander Hamilton

#52. Looking at the other person's point of view and arousing in him an eager want for something is not to be construed as manipulating that person so that he will do something that is only for your benefit and his detriment. Each party should gain from the negotiation.

Dale Carnegie

#53. Deep down, creationists realize they will never win factual arguments with science. This is why they have construed their own science-like universe, known as Intelligent Design, and eagerly jump on every tidbit of information that seems to go their way.

Frans De Waal

#54. It may not be impossible, but that our Faculties may be so construed, as always to deceive us in the things we judge most certain and assured.

Joseph Glanvill

#55. It has never happened!" cannot be construed to mean, "It can never happen!" - as

George R. Stewart

#56. We know of no behavior in ants or any other social insects that can be construed as play.

Bert Holldobler