Quotes by Alfred Korzybski - Page 1

The map is not the territory.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Journey
Philosophical
Philosophy
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Words don't mean, people mean.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Mean
Mean People
People
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I think therefore I seem to be.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Seems
Thinking
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Who rules our symbols, rules us.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
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Whatever you say it is, it isn't.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Whatever
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Identity is invariably false to facts.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Facts
Identity
Self Esteem
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Riches I need not, nor man's empty praise.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Men
Needs
Self Esteem
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Whatever you say about something, it is not.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Truth
Whatever You Say
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Whatever you may say something is, it is not!
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
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Whatever you say it is, is simply what YOU SAY it is.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
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Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Journey
Knowledge
Might
Objects
Wells
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We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Details
Missing
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God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Forgiveness
God
Forgiving
Integrity
May
Nervous
Nervous System
God Your May
Forgive
Sins
System
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Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Faith
Belief
Order
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A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Doe
Self Improvement
World
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What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Ideas
Progress
Reality
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Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Different
Mind
Thinking
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To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Darkness
Lamps
Reality
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It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Influential
Mystery
Philosopher
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Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Science
Disagreement
Lying
Obvious
Use
Lies
Noises
Origins
Thus
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He who learns and learns and yet does not know what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Doe
Knows
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I am the same kind of moron as the rest of you, it's the method that does the work, for me as well as for you.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Doe
Kind
Method
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If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Science
Enquiry
Inquiry
Mankind
Psychiatric
Rulers
Would Be
Appalled
Scientific
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Psycho-galvonic experiments show clearly that every emotion or thought is always connected with some electrical current.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Currents
Emotion
Psycho
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The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Fundamentals
Identity
Negative
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There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Education
Life
Believe
Doubt
Thinking
Both Ways
Easily
Save
Slice
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Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Play
Self Esteem
Training
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The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Maps
Territory
World
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I want to make clear only that words are not the things spoken about, and that there is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Ideas
Isolation
Want
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The objective level is not words, and cannot be reached by words alone. We must point our finger and be silent, or we will never reach this level.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Fingers
Levels
Silent
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Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols.... we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Men
Class
Use
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Different ‘philosophies’ represent nothing but methods of evaluation, which may lead to empirical mis-evaluation if science and empirical facts are disregarded.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Different
May
Philosophy
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It is a fallacy of the old schools to divide man into parcels, elements, thoughts, emotions, intuitions, etc. All human faculties consist of an interconnected whole.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Old School
Men
Intuition
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It is a fallacy of the old schools to divide man into parcels, elements, thoughts, emotions, intuitions, etc. All human faculties consist of an interconnected whole.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Old School
Men
Etc
Intuition
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Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Accounts
Characteristics
Important
Maps
Structure
Territory
Two
Usefulness
Correct
Map
Noticed
Represents
Similar
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One would have to say "in the end everything is a gag, etc" because everything is infinitely more than just a gag. The same applies to other "is"-statements such as "Laughter is an instant vacation"
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Vacation
Ends
Etc
Laughter
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If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Alone
Links
Maps
Structure
Territory
World
Words
Actual
Between
Possible
Linguistic
Objective
Obviously
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Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Isolation
Negative
Two
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Mathematics and logic have been proved to be one; a fact from which it seems to follow that mathematics may successfully deal with non-quantitative problems in a much broader sense than was suspected to be possible.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Facts
Logic
May
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The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a 'semantic disturbance' is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Confused
Maps
Territory
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Every language having a structure, by the very nature of language, reflects in its own structure that of the world as assumed by those who evolved the language. In other words, we read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Language
Use
World
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These 'philosophers', etc., seem unaware, to give a specific example, that by teaching and preaching 'identity', which is empirically non-existent in this actual world, they are neurologically training future generations in the pathological identifications found in the 'mentally' ill or maladjusted.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Giving
Self Esteem
Teaching
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It seems evident that everything which exists in nature, is natural, no matter how simple or complicated a phenomenon it is; and on no occasion can the so-called 'supernatural' be anything else than a completely natural law, though it may, at the moment, be above and beyond the present understanding.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Law
Simple
Understanding
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To regard human beings as tools - as instruments - for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of their maker - they have not man's time-binding capacity for initiation, for self-direction, and self-improvement.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Men
Self
Stupid
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If all people learned to think in the non Aristotelian manner of quantum mechanics, the world would change so radically that most of what we call "stupidity" and even a great deal of what we consider "insanity" might disappear, and the "intractable" problems of war, poverty and injustice would suddenly seem a great deal closer to solution.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
War
People
Thinking
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It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification - the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Agreement
Discovery
Two Nations
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As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Faith
Believe
Gambling
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If we, who live outside asylums, act as if we lived in a fictitious world- that is to say, if we are consistent with our beliefs- we cannot adjust ourselves to actual conditions, and so fall into many avoidable semantic difficulties. But the so-called normal person practically never abides by his beliefs, and when his beliefs are building for him a fictitious world, he saves his neck by not abiding by them. A so-called "insane" person acts upon his beliefs, and so cannot adjust himself to a world which is quite different from his fancy.
Alfred Korzybski / Philosopher
Faith
Fall
Insane Person
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