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Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.

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
Idea
Learn
Ideas
Nothing
Lack
Except
Possible
Wrong

More quotes by Gregory Bateson

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A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.
Gregory Bateson
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The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of course you never do.
Gregory Bateson
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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.
Gregory Bateson
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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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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
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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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Surrender to alcohol intoxication provides a partial and subjective shortcut to a more correct state of mind.
Gregory Bateson
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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
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Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.
Gregory Bateson
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There are no monotone values in biology.
Gregory Bateson
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The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.
Gregory Bateson
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We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong
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No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.
Gregory Bateson
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The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.
Gregory Bateson
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Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].
Gregory Bateson
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Life and 'Mind' are systemic processes.
Gregory Bateson
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Yes, metaphor. That's how the whole fabric of mental interconnections holds together. Metaphor is right at the bottom of being alive.
Gregory Bateson
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There are many matters and many circumstances in which consciousness is undesirable and silence is golden, so that secrecy can be used as a marker to tell us that we are approaching the holy.
Gregory Bateson
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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.
Gregory Bateson
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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