David Bellos famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Translating is a respectable, valuable, creative and worthwhile use of a human brain.
-- David Bellos

#Creative #Brain #Use
In painting as in prose, a good eye is not enough to tell you whether what you see is real or fake.
-- David Bellos

#Real #Eye #Fake
The practice of translation rests on two presuppositions. The first is that we are all different: we speak different tongues, and see the world in ways that are deeply influenced by the particular features of the tongue that we speak. The second is that we are all the same - that we can share the same broad and narrow kinds of feelings, information, understandings, and so forth. Without both of these suppositions, translation could not exist. Nor could anything we would like to call social life. Translation is another name for the human condition.
-- David Bellos

#Practice #Names #Two

I grew up in the '60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera.
Creative freedom is a huge carrot.
Idealism does not represent a superfluous expression of emotion, but in truth it has been, is, and will be, the premise for what we designate as human culture...Without his idealistic attitude all, even the most dazzling faculties of the intellect, would remain mere intellect just like outward appearance without inner value, and never creative force....The purest idealism is unconsciously equivalent to the deepest knowledge...
Brains first and then Hard Work.
But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.
Don't try to make intelligent decisions when your brain is hyped
Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well.
My view is when you use violence on your people, that never ends well.
I always said that you can use the same vehicle although the driver will change, or the same vehicle to go for the race. It's a different driver, this is exactly what's happening to the cabinet.
Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.

David Bellos famous quotes

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