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Who rules our symbols, rules us.

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
Symbols
Rules

More quotes by 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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God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
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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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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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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Whatever you say about something, it is not.
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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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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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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It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
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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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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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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Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.
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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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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Psycho-galvonic experiments show clearly that every emotion or thought is always connected with some electrical current.
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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Riches I need not, nor man's empty praise.
Alfred Korzybski
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To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
Alfred Korzybski