Alfred Korzybski Quotes & Sayings

Mathematics and logic have been proved to be one; a fact from which it seems to follow that mathematics may successfully deal with non-quantitative problems in a much broader sense than was suspected to be possible. — Alfred Korzybski

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. — Alfred Korzybski

We see what we see because we miss all the finer details. — Alfred Korzybski

Identity is invariably false to facts. — Alfred Korzybski

Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults. — Alfred Korzybski

Any object of thought is both 'more than what we think, and different'. — Alfred Korzybski

Until Einstein (roughly), THE universe of Newton was, for us, THE universe. With Einstein, it became A universe. Something similar happen to man. A new 'man' was produced, just as good, certainly contraditory to the old one. THE man became A man, otherwise a 'conceptual construction', one among the infinity of possible ones. — Alfred Korzybski

It seems evident that everything which exists in nature, is natural, no matter how simple or complicated a phenomenon it is; and on no occasion can the so-called 'supernatural' be anything else than a completely natural law, though it may, at the moment, be above and beyond the present understanding. — Alfred Korzybski

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing. — Alfred Korzybski

An individual cannot be considered entirely sane if he is wholly ignorant of scientific method and structure of nature and so retains primitive semantic reactions. — Alfred Korzybski

We humans, through old habits, and because of the inherent structure of human knowledge have a tendency to make static, definite, and, in a way, absolutistic one-valued statements. But when we fight absolutism, we quite often establish, instead, some other dogma equally silly and harmful. For instance, an active atheist is psycho-logically as unsound as a rabid theist. — Alfred Korzybski

If we, who live outside asylums, act as if we lived in a fictitious world- that is to say, if we are consistent with our beliefs- we cannot adjust ourselves to actual conditions, and so fall into many avoidable semantic difficulties. But the so-called normal person practically never abides by his beliefs, and when his beliefs are building for him a fictitious world, he saves his neck by not abiding by them. A so-called "insane" person acts upon his beliefs, and so cannot adjust himself to a world which is quite different from his fancy. — Alfred Korzybski

Psycho-galvonic experiments show clearly that every emotion or thought is always connected with some electrical current. — Alfred Korzybski

To regard human beings as tools - as instruments - for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of their maker - they have not man's time-binding capacity for initiation, for self-direction, and self-improvement. — Alfred Korzybski

Our rulers, who rule our symbols, and so rule a symbolic class of life, impose their own infantilism on our instituitions, educational methods, and doctrines. This leads to maladjustment of the incoming generations which, being born into, are forced to develop under the un-natural (for man) semantic conditions imposed on them. In turn, they produce leaders afflicted with the old animalistic limitations. The vicious circle is completed; it results in a general state of human un-sanity, reflected again in our instituitions. And so it goes, on and on. — Alfred Korzybski

The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a 'semantic disturbance' is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized. — Alfred Korzybski

It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill. — Alfred Korzybski

Whatever you say it is, is simply what YOU SAY it is. — Alfred Korzybski

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. — Alfred Korzybski

The objective level is not words, and cannot be reached by words alone. We must point our finger and be silent, or we will never reach this level. — Alfred Korzybski

The map is not the territory ... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map ... — Alfred Korzybski

I am the same kind of moron as the rest of you, it's the method that does the work, for me as well as for you. — Alfred Korzybski

Every language having a structure, by the very nature of language, reflects in its own structure that of the world as assumed by those who evolved the language. In other words, we read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use. — Alfred Korzybski

Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not. — Alfred Korzybski

These 'philosophers', etc., seem unaware, to give a specific example, that by teaching and preaching 'identity', which is empirically non-existent in this actual world, they are neurologically training future generations in the pathological identifications found in the 'mentally' ill or maladjusted. — Alfred Korzybski

No reflecting reader can deny that the passing off, on an unsuspecting listener, of noises for words, or symbols, must be classified as a fraud, or that we pass to the other fellow contagious semantic disturbances. — Alfred Korzybski

Whatever you may say something is, it is not! — Alfred Korzybski

Ignorance is no excuse when once we know that ignorance is the only possible excuse. — Alfred Korzybski

Any proposition containing the word "is" creates a linguistic structural confusion which will eventually give birth to serious fallacies. — Alfred Korzybski

The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.' — Alfred Korzybski

God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't. — Alfred Korzybski

Words don't mean, people mean. — Alfred Korzybski

He who learns and learns and yet does not know what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows. — Alfred Korzybski

The abuse of symbolism is like the abuse of food or drink: it makes people ill, and so their reactions become deranged. — Alfred Korzybski

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. — Alfred Korzybski

A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it. — Alfred Korzybski

Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols ... we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us. — Alfred Korzybski

Different 'philosophies' represent nothing but methods of evaluation, which may lead to empirical mis-evaluation if science and empirical facts are disregarded. — Alfred Korzybski

Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism. — Alfred Korzybski

Whatever we may say will not be the objective level, which remains fundamentally un-speakable. Thus, we can sit on the object called 'a chair', but we cannot sit on the noise we made or the name we applied to that object. — Alfred Korzybski

There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. — Alfred Korzybski

Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words. — Alfred Korzybski

It is a fallacy of the old schools to divide man into parcels, elements, thoughts, emotions, intuitions, etc. All human faculties consist of an interconnected whole. — Alfred Korzybski

Logic is the youth of mathematics, mathematics is the manhood of logic. This brilliant mot of the eminent philosopher of mathematics is no — Alfred Korzybski

The fallacy that Morley in his life of Gladstone asserts to be the greatest affliction of politicians; it is indeed a common plague of humanity. It is:
The fallacy of attributing to one cause what is due to many causes. — Alfred Korzybski

The map is not the territory. — Alfred Korzybski

From time immemorial, some men supposed to deal in one-valued 'eternal verities'. We called such men 'philosophers' or 'meta-physicians'. But they seldom realized that all their 'eternal verities' consisted only of words, and words which, for the most part, belonged to a primitive language, refleting in its structure the assumed structure of the world of remote antiquity. Besides, they did not realize that these 'eternal verities' last only so long as the human nervous system is not altered. Under the influence of these 'philosophers', two-valued 'logic', and the confusion of orders of abstractions, nearly all of us contracted a firmly rooted predilection for 'general' statements - 'universals', as they were called - which in most cases inherently involved the semantic one-valued conviction of validity for all 'time' to come. — Alfred Korzybski

What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities. — Alfred Korzybski

If all people learned to think in the non Aristotelian manner of quantum mechanics, the world would change so radically that most of what we call "stupidity" and even a great deal of what we consider "insanity" might disappear, and the "intractable" problems of war, poverty and injustice would suddenly seem a great deal closer to solution. — Alfred Korzybski

And how much more do we need Korzybski's consciousness of abstracting at a time when so much of our lives are spent absorbed in the highly abstracted and mediated maps rendered by our digital technologies, new media, and online communications? — Alfred Korzybski

Who rules our symbols, rules us. — Alfred Korzybski

To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness. — Alfred Korzybski

I think therefore I seem to be. — Alfred Korzybski

If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures. — Alfred Korzybski

Whatever you say it is, it isn't. — Alfred Korzybski

Both ignorance and the old metaphysics tend to produce these undesirable nervous effects of reversed order and so non-survival evaluation. If we use the nervous ystem in a way which is against its survival structure, we must expect non-survival. Human history is short, but already we have astonishing records of extinction. — Alfred Korzybski

As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances. — Alfred Korzybski

Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation. — Alfred Korzybski

Whatever you say about something, it is not. — Alfred Korzybski

One would have to say "in the end everything is a gag, etc" because everything is infinitely more than just a gag. The same applies to other "is"-statements such as "Laughter is an instant vacation" — Alfred Korzybski