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A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.

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
Imbalance
Correcting
Balance
Walking
Always
Never
Men

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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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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.
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Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].
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Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.
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After mastery comes artistry and not before.
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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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It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.
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Multiple descriptions are better than one.
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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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Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.
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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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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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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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We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong
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Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it.
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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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Information is a difference that makes a difference.
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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.
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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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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.
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