Quote

What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.

Alfred Korzybski

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alfred Korzybski
Age: 70 †
Born: 1879
Born: July 3
Died: 1950
Died: March 1
Engineer
Linguist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Warszawa
Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski
Ideas
Coordinating
Realities
Consists
Progress
Call
Reality

More quotes by Alfred Korzybski

Image
Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
Different ‘philosophies’ represent nothing but methods of evaluation, which may lead to empirical mis-evaluation if science and empirical facts are disregarded.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
He who learns and learns and yet does not know what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
Whatever you say about something, it is not.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
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
Image
Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols.... we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Whatever you might say the object is, well it is not.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
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
Image
To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
Words don't mean, people mean.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.
Alfred Korzybski
Image
A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it.
Alfred Korzybski