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Some tools of thought are so blunt that they are almost useless others are so sharp that they are dangerous. But the wise man will have the use of both kinds.

Gregory Bateson

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Gregory Bateson
Age: 76 †
Born: 1904
Born: May 9
Died: 1980
Died: July 4
Anthropologist
Biologist
Film Director
Linguist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Semiotician
Sociologist
Grantchester
Cambridgeshire
Others
Sharp
Thought
Useless
Kind
Kinds
Men
Tools
Dangerous
Wise
Almost
Use
Blunt

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A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms.
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People are going to have to make themselves predictable, or the machines will get angry and kill them.
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Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.
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Information is a difference that makes a difference.
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Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it.
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We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.
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In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA.
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I shall argue that the problem of grace is fundamentally a problem of integration and what is to be integrated is the diverse parts of the mind - especially those multiple levels of which one extreme is called 'consciousness' and the other the 'unconscious'
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We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future. We shall never be able to say, Ha! My perception, my accounting for that series, will indeed cover its next and future components, or Next time I meet with these phenomena, I shall be able to predict their total course.
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Surrender to alcohol intoxication provides a partial and subjective shortcut to a more correct state of mind.
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The wise legislator will only rarely initiate a new rule of behaviour more usually he will confine himself to affirming in law what has already become the custom of the people.
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To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least two sets of interactions in time.
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In the nature of the case, an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored.
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A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.
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Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.
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Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].
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Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.
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There are no monotone values in biology.
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The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.
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