Best Quotes by Alfred Korzybski (Top 10)
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The map is not the territory.
Alfred Korzybski
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
Alfred Korzybski
More Alfred Korzybski Quotes
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Whatever you may say something is, it is not!
Alfred Korzybski
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…the analogy between the noises we make when these noises do not symbolize anything which exists, and the worthless checks we write when our bank balance is zero…
Alfred Korzybski
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We should not be surprised that we find meaningless noises in the foundation of many old âphilosophies’, and that from them arise most of the old âphilosophical’ fights and arguments.
Alfred Korzybski
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…a few philosophers really do important work. This applies to the so called âcritical philosophy’ and to the theory of knowledge or epistemology. This class of workers I call epistemologists to avoid the disagreeable implications of the term âphilosopher’.
Alfred Korzybski
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In the rough, a symbol is a sign that stands for something… Before a noise, etc., may become a symbol, something must exist for the symbol to symbolize.
Alfred Korzybski
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If we consider that all we deal with represents constantly changing sub-microscopic, interrelated processes which are not, and cannot be âidentical with themselves’, the old dictum that âeverything is identical with itself’ becomes in [today’s understanding of the universe] a principle invariably false to facts.
Alfred Korzybski