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Alfred Korzybski Quotes
1879–1950 Poland
Alfred Korzybski (3 July 1879 – 1 March 1950) was a Polish-American philosopher and independent scholar who developed a field called general semantics, which he viewed as both distinct from, and more encompassing than, the field of semantics. He argued that human knowledge of the world is limited both by the human nervous system and the languages humans have developed, and thus no one can have direct access to reality, given that the most we can know is that which is filtered through the brain's responses to reality.
Poland Engineers Linguists Mathematicians Philosophers Also known as: Korzybski, Korzybski, Alfred
Random Alfred Korzybski quote
12 quotes
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
Manhood of Humanity (1921)
The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.
Science and Sanity (1933)
'Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not.'
The map is not the territory … The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.
Science and Sanity (1933)
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.
"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.
Science and Sanity (1933)
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.
Science and Sanity (1933)
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.
Manhood of Humanity (1921)
The word is not the object.
Science and Sanity (1933)
The main thesis of this Ā-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' of all degrees included, have this characteristic as a component.
Science and Sanity (1933)
A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. If the map could be ideally correct, it would include, in a reduced scale, the map of the map ; the map of the map, of the map; and so on, endlessly, a fact first noticed by Royce.
Science and Sanity (1933)
We do not realize what tremendous power the structure of an habitual language has. It is not an exaggeration to say that it enslaves us through the mechanism of s[emantic] r[eactions] and that the structure which a language exhibits, and impresses upon us unconsciously, is automatically projected upon the world around us.
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