Alfred Korzybski famous quotes

The map is not the territory.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Philosophy #Philosophical #Journey

There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Life #Education #Believe

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

#Men #Class #Use

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

#World #Maps #Territory

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

#Two #Negative #Isolation

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

#Doe #Kind #Method

It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Philosopher #Influential #Mystery

Who rules our symbols, rules us.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Symbols

We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Missing #Details

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

#Stupid #Men #Self

Different ‘philosophies’ represent nothing but methods of evaluation, which may lead to empirical mis-evaluation if science and empirical facts are disregarded.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Philosophy #Different #May

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

#Faith #Fall #Insane

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

#Faith #Believe #Gambling

Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Faith #Order #Belief

A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Self Improvement #Doe #World

Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Self Esteem #Play #Training

Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Lying #Science #Use

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

#Two #Important #Maps

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

#World #Maps #Links

God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Integrity #Forgiving #May

If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Science #Would Be #Enquiry

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

#Levels #Silent #Fingers

Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Knowledge #Might #Wells

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

#Laughter #Vacation #Etc

Riches I need not, nor man's empty praise.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Self Esteem #Men #Riches

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

#Self Esteem #Teaching #Giving

Whatever you say about something, it is not.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Truth

The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Identity #Negative #Fundamentals

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

#Discovery #Agreement #Two

Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Thinking #Mind #Different

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

#Want #Isolation #Clear

Whatever you say it is, is simply what YOU SAY it is.
-- Alfred Korzybski

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

#May #Facts #Logic

Identity is invariably false to facts.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Self Esteem #Identity #Facts

Whatever you may say something is, it is not!
-- Alfred Korzybski

#May

Psycho-galvonic experiments show clearly that every emotion or thought is always connected with some electrical current.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Psycho #Emotion #Currents

To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
-- Alfred Korzybski

#Reality #Darkness #Lamps