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It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.
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
Life
Anthropologist
Sphinx
Anthropologists
Riddle
Devoted
Professional
Fifty
Years
More quotes by Gregory Bateson
Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.
Gregory Bateson
We are discovering today that several of the premises which are deeply ingrained in our way of life are simply untrue and become pathogenic when implemented with modern technology.
Gregory Bateson
Life and 'Mind' are systemic processes.
Gregory Bateson
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
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
Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.
Gregory Bateson
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.
Gregory Bateson
In the nature of the case, an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored.
Gregory Bateson
No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.
Gregory Bateson
Information is a difference that makes a difference.
Gregory Bateson
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
Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.
Gregory Bateson
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
The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of course you never do.
Gregory Bateson
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
Surrender to alcohol intoxication provides a partial and subjective shortcut to a more correct state of mind.
Gregory Bateson
People are going to have to make themselves predictable, or the machines will get angry and kill them.
Gregory Bateson
A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.
Gregory Bateson
It is of first-class importance that our answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx should be in step with how we conduct our civilisation, and this should in turn be in step with the actual workings of living systems.
Gregory Bateson
We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong
Gregory Bateson
