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We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.

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
Finer
Details
Miss
Missing

More quotes by Alfred Korzybski

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Whatever you say about something, it is not.
Alfred Korzybski
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Who rules our symbols, rules us.
Alfred Korzybski
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I think therefore I seem to be.
Alfred Korzybski
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God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
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 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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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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There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
Alfred Korzybski
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The map is not the territory.
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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Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults.
Alfred Korzybski
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Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.
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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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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Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.
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, 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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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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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