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Perhaps the attempt to achieve grace by identification with the animals was the most sensitive thing which was tried in the whole bloody history of religion.

— Gregory Bateson to Bateson (1980)

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More quotes by Gregory Bateson

Things have to be done fast in America, and therefore therapy has to be brief.

p. 148 as cited in: C.H. Patterson (1958)

Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.

The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named (see also, Alfred Korzybski).

The world partly becomes — comes to be — how it is imagined.

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?

All Gregory Bateson quotes →

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Gregory Bateson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.