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In the nature of the case, an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored.

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
Explorer
Explored
Explorers
Exploring
Case
Cases
Nature
Never

More quotes by Gregory Bateson

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Information is a difference that makes a difference.
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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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The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.
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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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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.
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Life and 'Mind' are systemic processes.
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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.
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No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.
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Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.
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A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.
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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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Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it.
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The only way out is spiritual, intellectual, and emotional revolution in which, finally, we learn to experience first hand the interloping connections between person and person, organism and organism, action and consequence.
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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.
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It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.
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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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After mastery comes artistry and not before.
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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.
Gregory Bateson
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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