Alfred Korzybski Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

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

Alfred Korzybski
The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all "knowledge" is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system.

Alfred Korzybski
I want to make clear only that words are not the things spoken about, and that there is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.

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
What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.

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

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

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

Alfred Korzybski
The main thesis of this non-Aristotelian system is that as yet we all (with extremely few exceptions) copy animals in our nervous processes, and that practically all human difficulties, mental ills … have this … component.

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

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
Such as contribute most to human progress and human enlightenment — men like Gutenberg, Copernicus, Newton, Leibnitz, Watts, Franklin, Mendeleieff, Pasteur, Sklodowska-Curie, Edison, Steinmetz, Loeb, Dewey, Keyser, Whitehead, Russell, Poincaré, William Benjamin Smith, Gibbs, Einstein, and many others — consume no more bread than the simplest of their fellow mortals. Indeed such men are often in want. How many a genius has perished inarticulate because unable to stand the strain of social conditions where animal standards prevail and "survival of the fittest" means, not survival of the "fittest in time-binding capacity," but survival of the strongest in ruthlessness and guile — in space-binding competition!

Alfred Korzybski
"Say whatever you choose about the object, and whatever you might say is not it." Or, in other wordsː "Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not." This negative statement is final, because it is negative.

Alfred Korzybski
Any organism must be treated as-a-whole; in other words, that an organism is not an algebraic sum, a linear function of its elements, but always more than that. It is seemingly little realized, at present, that this simple and innocent-looking statement involves a full structural revision of our language...

Alfred Korzybski