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

Alfred Korzybski

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Alfred Korzybski
Age: 70 †
Born: 1879
Born: July 3
Died: 1950
Died: March 1
Engineer
Linguist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Warszawa
Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski
Like
Lamps
Search
Darkness
Words
Use
Sense
Reality
Going
Lamp

More quotes by Alfred Korzybski

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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
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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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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
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Whatever you may say something is, it is not!
Alfred Korzybski
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Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults.
Alfred Korzybski
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Whatever you might say the object is, well it is not.
Alfred Korzybski
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Whatever you say it is, is simply what YOU SAY it is.
Alfred Korzybski
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Who rules our symbols, rules us.
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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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
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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
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What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.
Alfred Korzybski
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Whatever you say about something, it is not.
Alfred Korzybski
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I think therefore I seem to be.
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 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
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A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.
Alfred Korzybski
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The map is not the territory.
Alfred Korzybski
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Riches I need not, nor man's empty praise.
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