Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski , was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist most remembered for developing the theory of general semantics.
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(23 quotes found)
“There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.”
Alfred Korzybski
“If the map shows a different structure from the territory represented -- for instance, shows the cities in a wrong order. . . . then the map is worse than useless, as it misinforms and leads astray.”
“When we say ‘our rulers’, we mean those who are engaged in the manipulation of symbols. We must consider ourselves a symbolic, semantic class of life, and cannot cease from being so… those who control the symbols rule us.Bankers, priests, lawyers,… politicians, [and news media] constitute one class [of our rulers] and work together. They do not produce any values but manipulate the values produced by others, and often pass signs for no value at all. Scientists and teachers also comprise a ruling class. They produce the main values mankind has, but, at present, they do not realize this. They are, in the main, ruled by the cunning methods of the first class.”
“God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't”
“The map is not the territory.”
“If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.”
“There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everythingor to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.”
“It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification -- the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life.”
“Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”
“…the analogy between the noises we make when these noises do not symbolize anything which exists, and the worthless checks we write when our bank balance is zero…”