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

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
Objects
Thought
Different
Mind
Think
Thinking
Object

More quotes by 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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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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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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Every language having a structure, by the very nature of language, reflects in its own structure that of the world as assumed by those who evolved the language. In other words, we read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use.
Alfred Korzybski
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Different ‘philosophies’ represent nothing but methods of evaluation, which may lead to empirical mis-evaluation if science and empirical facts are disregarded.
Alfred Korzybski
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Who rules our symbols, rules us.
Alfred Korzybski
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He who learns and learns and yet does not know what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows.
Alfred Korzybski
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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
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The map is not the territory.
Alfred Korzybski
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Whatever you say it is, is simply what YOU SAY it is.
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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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 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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What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.
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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Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.
Alfred Korzybski
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Words don't mean, people mean.
Alfred Korzybski
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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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Whatever you might say the object is, well 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