Philosophy Quote by Zain Abdul Nassir — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“If translation is realignment, what specifically is getting realigned? Our perceptions, our literary categories, our languages? I would say it's the text's relationship to its audience-who is speaking, who is addressed, where the text is "pointing." Any text can, and any good text will, redirect our perceptions, redefine the genre it's working within, and change the resources or enlarge the scope of the language it's written in, but the particular "realignment" that takes place in translation refers to the vector pointing from author to reader.”

“Every country has the government it deserves.”

“when a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world.”

“It is not enough to show how clever we are by showing how obscure everything is".”

“I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim.”