Top 47 Quotes & Sayings by Alfred Korzybski

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Polish scientist Alfred Korzybski.

Last updated on September 17, 2024.

Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski was a Polish-American 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. His best known dictum is "The map is not the territory".

Polish - Scientist | July 3, 1879 - March 1, 1950

Source: Wikipedia

There are two ways to slice easily thorugh life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.

Alfred Korzybski

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

Alfred Korzybski

Whatever you say it is, it isn't.

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever you say about something, it is not.

Alfred Korzybski

Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.

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

What we call progress consists in coordinating ideas with realities.

Alfred Korzybski

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

Alfred Korzybski

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

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

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

Alfred Korzybski

The map is not the territory.

Alfred Korzybski

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

Alfred Korzybski

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

Alfred Korzybski

We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.

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

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

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

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

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

I think therefore I seem to be.

Alfred Korzybski

Words don't mean, people mean.

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

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

Who rules our symbols, rules us.

Alfred Korzybski

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

Alfred Korzybski

Identity is invariably false to facts.

Alfred Korzybski

Riches I need not, nor man's empty praise.

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

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

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

Alfred Korzybski

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

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

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

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

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 might say the object "is", well it is not.

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

Whatever you may say something is, it is not!

Alfred Korzybski