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Whatever you say it is, is simply what YOU SAY it is.

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
Simply
Whatever

More quotes by Alfred Korzybski

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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
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We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
Alfred Korzybski
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Whatever you say about something, it is not.
Alfred Korzybski
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God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
Alfred Korzybski
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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
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Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.
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 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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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
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Psycho-galvonic experiments show clearly that every emotion or thought is always connected with some electrical current.
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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Whatever you might say the object is, well it is not.
Alfred Korzybski
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Riches I need not, nor man's empty praise.
Alfred Korzybski
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The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'
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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I think therefore I seem to be.
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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Whatever you may say something is, it is not!
Alfred Korzybski
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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
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Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults.
Alfred Korzybski