Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future. "
Gregory Bateson
Future
Know
Present
Related Quotes:
" Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it. "
Gregory Bateson
War
Next
Fear
" 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
Expect
Straight
Think
" Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions. "
Gregory Bateson
Sleep
Religion
Like
" All experience is subjective. "
Gregory Bateson
Subjective
Experience
" Number is different from quantity. "
Gregory Bateson
Number
Different
Quantity
" It is impossible, in principle, to explain any pattern by invoking a single quantity. "
Gregory Bateson
Impossible
Principle
Quantity
" Language commonly stresses only one side of any interaction. "
Gregory Bateson
Interaction
Language
Communication
" 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
DNA
People
Learning
" If we pursue this matter further, we shall be told that the stable object is unchanging under the impact or stress of some particular external or internal variable or, perhaps, that it resists the passage of time. "
Gregory Bateson
Stress
Time
Pursue
" Synaptic summation is the technical term used in neurophysiology for those instances in which some neuron C is fired only by a combination of neurons A and B. "
Gregory Bateson
Used
Fired
Only
" It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist. "
Gregory Bateson
Professional Life
Life
Professional
" 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
Nature
Education
People
" 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
Answers
Answer
Difficulty
" It is, I claim, nonsense to say that it does not matter which individual man acted as the nucleus for the change. It is precisely this that makes history unpredictable into the future. "
Gregory Bateson
History
Claim
Change
" 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
Knowing
Always
Heart
" Money is always transitively valued. More money is supposedly always better than less money. "
Gregory Bateson
Always
Than
More
" Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement. This means that numbers can conceivably be accurate because there is a discontinuity between each integer and the next. "
Gregory Bateson
Product
Measurement
Because
" There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong. "
Gregory Bateson
I Believe
Strong
Believe
" Logic is a poor model of cause and effect. "
Gregory Bateson
Logic
Cause
Model
" Members of weakly religious families get, of course, no religious training from any source outside the family. "
Gregory Bateson
Get
Outside
Family
" 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
Step
Turn
Riddle
" Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause. "
Gregory Bateson
Does
Cause
Reversed
" Rather, for all objects and experiences, there is a quantity that has optimum value. Above that quantity, the variable becomes toxic. To fall below that value is to be deprived. "
Gregory Bateson
Above
Quantity
Fall