"The Koran cannot be translated — the "map" changes on translation no matter how carefully one tries."

Robert A. Heinlein Literature See all quotes by Robert A. Heinlein →

React to this quote

More by Robert A. Heinlein

“Matt, you are suffering from a disease of youth—you expect moral problems to have nice, neat, black-and-white answers.”

“Clark just looked bored and contemptuous and said nothing, because Clark would not bother to interfere with Armageddon unless there was ten percent in it for him.”

“Learning isn’t a means to an end; it is an end in itself.”

“I used to wonder what it was like to be rich. Now I am and it turns out to be mostly headaches.”

“He seeks order, not truth. Suppose truth defies order, will he accept it? Will you? I think not.”

“Is it not better to be in ignorance than to believe falsely?”

Resonant Thoughts

"I was filled with joy when studying quantum physics at the university as a means to understand the universe. But at the same time, I was preoccupied with the oppressive conditions in my country and th…"

— Narges Mohammadi

Politics1972

#knowledge

"As he went through the half-darkness of the lamp-lit streets, deserted almost entirely at this hour, he brooded over his hard luck. What chance had he ever been given? Raught, for that matter, like ma…"

— Edmund Clerihew Bentley

Literature1875–1956

#time

"I outlawed the word 'user' in all company meetings, and insisted it be replaced by the words 'my friend', 'my wife', 'my daughter', 'my mother' or 'myself'. It doesn't sound the same at all, if you sa…"

— Philippe Starck

1949

#family

"I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all we can see of the objective world as human beings, never really exists as we see and understand it…"

— Giorgio Morandi

Art1890–1964

#knowledge