Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It takes two to know one.
All experience is subjective.
Science probes; it does not prove.
Number is different from quantity.
Life and 'Mind' are systemic processes.
Multiple descriptions are better than one.
Logic is a poor model of cause and effect.
There are no monotone "values" in biology.
After mastery comes artistry and not before.
Wisdom is the intelligence of the system as a whole.
Information is a difference that makes a difference.
Without context words and actions have no meaning at all
Creative thought must always contain a random component.
The meaning of your communication is the response you get.
Play is the establishment and exploration of relationship.
Information consists of differences that make a difference.
Language commonly stresses only one side of any interaction.
Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it.
The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong
We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future.
A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.
Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause.
Things have to be done fast in America , and therefore therapy has to be brief.
Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.
It is impossible, in principle, to explain any pattern by invoking a single quantity.
The world is indeed only a small tide pool; disturb one part and the rest is threatened.
Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.
The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of course you never do.
Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.
Money is always transitively valued. More money is supposedly always better than less money.
Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].
The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.
The map is not the territory (coined by Alfred Korzybski), and the name is not the thing named.
No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.
Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.
In the nature of the case, an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored.
People are going to have to make themselves predictable, or the machines will get angry and kill them.
We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.
Whatever the ups and downs of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.
It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.
Surrender to alcohol intoxication provides a partial and subjective shortcut to a more correct state of mind.
Members of weakly religious families get, of course, no religious training from any source outside the family.
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.
There are times when I catch myself believing that there is such a thing as something; which is separate from something else.
What is the pattern that connects the crab to the lobster and the primrose to the orchid, and all of them to me, and me to you?
Yes, metaphor. That's how the whole fabric of mental interconnections holds together. Metaphor is right at the bottom of being alive.
To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least two sets of interactions in time.
Perhaps the attempt to achieve grace by identification with the animals was the most sensitive thing which was tried in the whole bloody history of religion .
Synaptic summation is the technical term used in neurophysiology for those instances in which some neuron C is fired only by a combination of neurons A and B.