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Context Quotes

Browse 57 quotes about Context.

Context Quotes

“When two people talk, their words live within a shared space—shaped by trust, tone, timing, and all the unsaid things between them. Pull those words out of that space, twist them around, strip them of their setting—and to me, that feels like a betrayal. It’s not just misunderstanding; it’s a kind of violence. Literalists scare me—not because they’re wrong, but because they refuse to see beyond the surface. They flatten meaning, ignore nuance, and use language to serve their own narrow views. Context isn’t a footnote—it’s the heart of everything.”

TrustBetrayalMisunderstandingContext
Author:Renuka Goria
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“Museums alone cannot ease the tensions that come from the debates surrounding the fluidity of national identity in the twenty-first century. Nor can any cultural institution solve the problems of poverty, racial injustice, and police violence. But museums can contribute to understanding by creating spaces where debates are spirited but reasoned. Where contemporary challenges are addressed through contextualization and education.”

UnderstandingChallengesPovertyMuseumsRacial JusticeCurrent EventsContextPolice ViolenceDebates
Book:A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump
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“Hippasus’ proof—or at least Nico’s retelling of it—was really so simple that when he finished sketching it out, I wasn’t even aware that we had actually proven anything. Nico paused for a few minutes to let us mull it over. It was Peter who broke the silence, “I’m not sure I understand what we have done.” Nico seemed to be expecting such a response. “Step back and examine the proof; in fact, you should try and do this with every proof you see or have to work out for yourself. ..." He again waited for his words to sink in, and it began to make sense for me. All my mathematics teachers (other than Bauji and Nico) always seemed to evade this part of their responsibility. They had been content to merely write out a proof on the blackboard and carry on, seemingly without concern for what the proof meant and what it told us. “But you should not stop here. Even when you have understood a proof, and I hope you have indeed understood this proof, ask yourself the next question, the obvious one, but as critical: So what? Or, why are we proving this? What is the point? What is the context? How does it relate to us? To answer these questions we have to step back a little. Let me show you—it’s really quite delightful.” Now there was excitement in Nico’s voice.”

UnderstandingTeachMathematicsProofMeaningCritical ThinkingWhyContextStep Back
Book:A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel
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“We all hygger: gathered around a table for a shared meal or beside a fire on a dark night, when we sit in the corner of our local cafe or wrap ourselves in a blanket at the end of a day on the beach. Lying spoons, baking in a warm kitchen, bathing by candlelight, being alone in bed with a hot water bottle and a good book - these are all ways to hygge. Hygge draws meaning from the fabric of ordinary living. It'a a way of acknowledging the sacred in the secular, of giving something ordinary a special context, spirit and warmth and taking time to make it extraordinary.”

SpiritShareSpecialLivingOrdinaryExtraordinaryMeaningWarmthHyggeContext
Book:The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Living Well
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“If we see ourselves primarily from the point of view of our relationships (good, bad, and ugly), we will never be able to reach our full potential. While we deeply love those God gives us along the way, the most important, ongoing relationship we will ever have is with our own Divine being. We were born as a single entity, we will face death on our own, and we must make our way back to the Divine under our own steam. Never give that right and responsibility away to another person, and never take it from another. You will find that the respect and gratitude from those you do this for runs deep.”

LifeSoulSpiritualityRelationshipsRespectPotentialWholenessSpiritual PathContext
Book:Touched by Love
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“You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness; and of all things, it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time: a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes: the scene consecrates the object I am going to love. The context is the constellation of elements, harmoniously arranged that encompass the experience of the amorous subject... Love at first sight is always spoken in the past tense. The scene is perfectly adapted to this temporal phenomenon: distinct, abrupt, framed, it is already a memory (the nature of a photograph is not to represent but to memorialize)... this scene has all the magnificence of an accident: I cannot get over having had this good fortune: to meet what matches my desire. The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other... In this moment, everything is suspended: time, law, prohibition: nothing is exhausted, nothing is wanted: all desires are abolished, for they seem definitively fulfilled... A moment of affirmation; for a certain time, though a finite one, a deranged interval, something has been successful: I have been fulfilled (all my desires abolished by the plenitude of their satisfaction).”

LoveSuccessDesireTimeChanceExperienceEmbraceLongingFortuneMemorySatisfactionLove At First SightAffirmationMomentUnionAmorousContextGestureConsummation
Book:A lover's discourse: fragments
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“There are many voices in the world. The social environment will try to mould us in the image and likeness of man. People will influence us one way or another, but we have in our hearts the voice of God, calling us in every moment to return to love, to return to Truth. We have been given everything we need to make our dreams a reality, and fulfill our destiny. Believe it or not, the freedom to do so is ours.”

GodFreedomDestinySocietyBook QuotesFollow Your DreamsOpinions Of OthersContextTrust GodHay House
Book:The Pursuit of Dreams: Claim Your Power, Follow Your Heart, and Fulfill Your Destiny
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“All overt and covert emotions would shrivel without the beam of contrast and comparison to supply context and implication. We need the value of counterpoise to recognize and distinguish between similar and dissimilar concepts. How do we identify the importance of hope if we never felt despair? How do we appreciate the value of society and companionship until we experience solitude and loneliness? What would any relationship be unless draped with the boughs of thoughts and feelings, without the ongoing interaction between conscientious action and unreserved devotion, without endless empathy fused with boundless love? In the ring of time, without the verve supplied by both the real and the imaginary, life would be bland, insipid, and lackluster.”

PhilosophyFeelingsThoughtsEmotionsPhilosophy Of LifeComparisonContrastFeelings And EmotionsThoughts On LifeThoughts Of The MindThoughts QuotesContextContextualizationFeelings And PerceptionsCounterpartImplicationCounterpoise
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“I had always believed that the [Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture] should be a safe haven that helps Americans wrestle with and better understand the difficult current issues of race, justice, and equality. In essence, the museum is a bully pulpit that provides NMAAHC with the opportunity and responsibility to clarify and contextualize concerns that often divide or perplex the American public.... I think it is important for NMAAHC, for the Smithsonian, to engage in the public square in a manner that brings reason, knowledge, and contextualization to the contemporary challenges faced by America. Actions like this are not without risk to an institution that operates within a federal umbrella. Yet I believe that museums like NMAAHC have an obligation to use their expertise, their platform, to contribute to the greater good of a nation.”

JusticeRaceHistoryEqualityMuseumsAfrican AmericansBlacksCurrent EventsAfrican American HistoryContext
Book:A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump
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“I hope that the [Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture] never retreats from embracing controversy and, no matter how multifaceted or incendiary the issue, NMAAHC will strive to help the public find contextualization and common ground in a safe and civil environment. I trust that the museum will always be a bully pulpit where boldness and innovation are more than just words. And to use that platform to combat the creeping sense of selective historical amnesia that limits America's ability to understand its past, and itself. I hope that NMAAHC will always celebrate its diverse staff in ways that nurture, protect, and challenge. And it is my hope that the museum will prod and remind other cultural entities, both within and outside of the Smithsonian, that the ultimate goal is to make a people, make a country better.”

HistoryInnovationMuseumsAmerican HistoryControversyCurrent EventsContext
Book:A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump
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“You know, Junie, you're fourteen now. I think you can certainly manage to put together a sandwich. ... The thing is, if my mother had any idea what I had in my backpack, she would have made me that sandwich. If she knew that I'd searched and searched the house until I finally found the little key to the fireproof box buried in the bottom of her underwear drawer, if she knew that I'd unlocked the box and taken my passport out, that I had it with me right that very second in a Ziploc bag in the bottom of my backpack, if she knew why I had it there, if she knew even a bit of all that, she might have made me that PBJ. She wouldn't have said, "You're fourteen now," like she thought I was some kind of responsible adult. No. If she knew about my plan, she would have said, "you're only fourteen." She would have told me that I was crazy to think about going to England with I was only fourteen.”

ChildrenPerceptionParentsContext
Book:Tell the Wolves I'm Home
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“Of course, in television's presentation of the "news of the day," we may see the Now...this" mode of discourse in it's boldest and most embarrassing form. For there, we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as pure entertainment.”

TechnologyTelevisionNewsEntertainmentDiscourseEmbarrassingPresentationContextFragmentNews Of The Day
Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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“Art is the conscious making of numinous phenomena. Many objects are just objects - inert, merely utilitarian. Many events are inconsequential, too banal to add anything to our experience of life. This is unfortunate, as one cannot grow except by having one’s spirit greatly stirred; and the spirit cannot be greatly stirred by spiritless things. Much of our very life is dead. For primitive man, this was not so. He made his own possessions, and shaped and decorated them with the aim of making them not merely useful, but powerful. He tried to infuse his weapons with the nature of the tiger, his cooking pots with the life of growing things; and he succeeded. Appearance, material, history, context, rarity - perhaps rarity most of all - combine to create, magically, the quality of soul. But we modern demiurges are prolific copyists; we give few things souls of their own. Locomotives, with their close resemblance to beasts, may be the great exception; but in nearly all else with which today’s poor humans are filling the world, I see a quelling of the numinous, an ashening of the fire of life. We are making an inert world; we are building a cemetery. And on the tombs, to remind us of life, we lay wreaths of poetry and bouquets of painting. You expressed this very condition, when you said that art beautifies life. No longer integral, the numinous has become optional, a luxury - one of which you, my dear friend, are fond, however unconsciously. You adorn yourself with the same instincts as the primitive who puts a frightening mask of clay and feathers on his head, and you comport yourself in an uncommonly calculated way - as do I. We thus make numinous phenomena of ourselves. No mean trick - to make oneself a rarity, in this overpopulated age.”

ArtSoulSpiritPoetryHistoryObjectsPaintingAppearanceArtistsTombsMasksRarityMaterialContextLocomotivesCemeteriesIntegralGwynnNuminous PhenomenaAsheningBeth ConstanzinDemiurgesQuelling
Book:The Etched City
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“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to." [MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]”

InspirationCreativityTransformationAuthenticityOriginalityCreative ProcessImitationRulesPostmodernismSense Of WonderContextSources
Author:Jim Jarmusch
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“Always be careful, as they say, “Text without context is usually pretext.” In other words, people like to try to use the Bible to get you to agree with them instead of helping you understand what a given section of Scripture meant to its original audience at the time. I gotta think St. John would back me up on that.”

WritingPropagandaPoliticiansCharlatansPunditsContextTextCon ArtistsTelevangelists
Book:Dear John; Ploughboy Postcards
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“My point is that we are by now so thoroughly adjusted to the "Now . . . this" world of news—a world of fragments, where events stand alone, stripped of any connection to the past, or to the future, or to other events—that all assumptions of coherence have vanished. And so, perforce, has contradiction. In the context of no context, so to speak, it simply disappears. And in its absence, what possible interest could there be in a list of what the President says now and what he said then? It is merely a rehash of old news, and there is nothing interesting or entertaining in that.”

PoliticsMediaNewsStoryCoherenceContextElectronic Media
Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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“Where religious doctrines exist, for example, they can only become real to the extent that there exist concrete semiotic practices by which they can be enacted, embodied, experienced, and transmitted. But those practices will be subject to such factors as logistics, aesthetics, economics, or prior history, that are independent of the logical, political, or emotional demands of and constraints on doctrine itself. [...] Even textual forms as relatively autonomous, portable, and durable as written scriptures depend for their persistence and power on social dynamics surrounding contextualization and entextualization.”

ReligionAnthropologyReligious LifeContextContextualizationReligious DoctrinesReligious Language
Author:Webb Keane
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“Agriculture must mediate between nature and the human community, with ties and obligations in both directions. To farm well requires an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures, animate and inanimate. It is sympathy that most appropriately enlarges the context of human work. Contexts become wrong by being too small - too small, that is, to contain the scientist or the farmer or the farm family or the local ecosystem or the local community - and this is crucial.”

CommunityAgricultureContextHusbandry
Book:Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food
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“After so long, you realise that knowing things doesn't especially matter very much. Knowledge with no context is meaningless. That's not the real treasure. 'Oh?' I tucked away my tools and stood. 'What is, then?' Vale stood, too. He was quite tall, and he looked down at me with a wolfish kind of delight. He smiled, revealing those deadly fangs. The moonlight from the window glinted in his amber eyes. I felt, all at once, like an idiot for thinking before that he didn't look monstrous. Because in this moment, with that smirk on his lips, I glimpsed the man of the legends. The monster of the whispers. 'Curiosity,' he said.”

KnowledgeCuriosityMeaninglessCrowns Of NyaxiaCarissa BroadbentLilithContextValeSix Scorched RosesLord Vale
Book:Six Scorched Roses
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“When our mental functioning is whittling away and our mind becomes a lame duck, perception does not form the context anymore and all connections on the social chessboard are conked out. Only patience and endurance may draw us out of the quagmire of numbness and allow us to tear open the cloudy screen that is hiding our points of ‘interest’ and ‘attention’, so long as we focus on the ‘singular moments’ and the ‘appealing details’ in our life. Awareness can help us shape a comprehensive picture for a functional future. ("Lost the global story.")”

LifeMindMomentsLostFocusAwarenessFuturePerceptionConnectionsPatienceDetailsEnduranceMentalComprehensiveNumbnessCloudyPictureShapeContextQuagmireScreenFunctioningAppealingSingularChessboardGlobal StoryLame DuckConked OutTear OpenWhittle Away
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“The will to truth is enshrined in the mind. It is undeniable, inescapable, mutable only if one’s humanity itself is rejected, itself muted. Yet the form of this truth, whether it be elaborate, simple, exclusive and regulatory or comprehensive and positive… this is a matter of aesthetics, taste... ...It is all inherently meaningless, the puzzle just as much as the pieces themselves, ephemeral. Yet more than this it is concrete, eternal, heavy and inescapable, a preponderous amalgam of things small and large, the actuality of which is imminent, the meaning of which is too great to acknowledge, let alone comprehend. So we tell stories. We read stories, write them, consider them and like them, or not. Simply ways, simple ways, to limit the All to that which can be understood.”

StoriesContextWill To Truth
Book:Epoch Awakening
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“It follows that the one thing we should not do to the men and women of past time, and particularly if they ghost through to us as larger than life, is to take them out of their historical contexts. To do so is to run the risk of turning them into monsters, whom we can denounce for our (frequently political) motives—an insidious game, because we are condemning in their make-up that which is likely to belong to a whole social world, the world that helped to fashion them and that is deviously reflected or distorted in them. Censure of this sort is the work of petty moralists and propagandists, not historians (p. 5).”

HistoryMemoryThe PastCensureContextHistoriansPropagandistsMoralists
Book:Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence
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