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What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.

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
Realities
Consists
Progress
Call
Reality
Ideas
Coordinating

More quotes by Alfred Korzybski

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Whatever you may say something is, it is not!
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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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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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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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 now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
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 might say the object is, well it is not.
Alfred Korzybski
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The map is not the territory.
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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To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
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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Who rules our symbols, rules us.
Alfred Korzybski
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Identity is invariably false to facts.
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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Whatever you say about something, it is not.
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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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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Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'.
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