Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Thought
Useless
Kind
Kinds
Men
Tools
Dangerous
Wise
Almost
Use
Blunt
Others
Sharp

More quotes by Gregory Bateson

Image
People are going to have to make themselves predictable, or the machines will get angry and kill them.
Gregory Bateson
Image
In the nature of the case, an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored.
Gregory Bateson
Image
There are no monotone values in biology.
Gregory Bateson
Image
A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.
Gregory Bateson
Image
Interesting phenomena occur when two or more rhythmic patterns are combined, and these phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another.
Gregory Bateson
Image
Life and 'Mind' are systemic processes.
Gregory Bateson
Image
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.
Gregory Bateson
Image
But epistemology is always and inevitably personal. The point of the probe is always in the heart of the explorer: What is my answer to the question of the nature of knowing?
Gregory Bateson
Image
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.
Gregory Bateson
Image
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.
Gregory Bateson
Image
We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.
Gregory Bateson
Image
Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.
Gregory Bateson
Image
It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.
Gregory Bateson
Image
Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.
Gregory Bateson
Image
Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.
Gregory Bateson
Image
Official education was telling people almost nothing of the nature of all those things on the seashores, and in the redwood forests, in the deserts and in the plains.
Gregory Bateson
Image
Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].
Gregory Bateson
Image
The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
Gregory Bateson
Image
Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.
Gregory Bateson
Image
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'
Gregory Bateson