A Quote by 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

Quote Topics

Accounts Characteristics Correct Important Map Maps Noticed Represents Should Similar Structure Territory Two Usefulness Which

Quote Author

Alfred Korzybski
Polish - Scientist
July 3, 1879 - March 1, 1950

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

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

There is a vast territory between what we're trying to leave behind, and where we want to go - and we don't have any maps for that territory.

Charles Eisenstein

The map is not the territory, but you can't fold up the territory and put it in the glove compartment.

Arthur D. Hlavaty

One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory. You must remember this.

Neil Gaiman

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

A Country is not a mere territory; the particular territory is only its foundation. The Country is the idea which rises upon that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellowship which binds together all the sons of that territory.

Giuseppe Mazzini

I've laid out a plan for how we keep people safe here at home, and I've laid out a plan of how we wage war and win by denying ISIS territory overseas. We must deny them their territory because the territory that they've conquered because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama declared victory in Iraq and against every generals advice withdrew all of our troops, leaving a vacuum, weaponry, territory for ISIS to conquer, that territory, their caliphate, is that from which they draw legitimacy, potency, credibility. We have to deny them that territory.

Carly Fiorina

Michel Houellebecq is the most interesting, provocative and important European novelist of my generation. Period. No one else comes close. He has written two or maybe three great books, and his latest, The Map and the Territory, is one of them.

Bret Easton Ellis

A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability.

Abraham Lincoln

THE ULTIMATE METAPHYSICAL SECRET, if we dare state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two.

Ken Wilber

Principles are the territory. Values are maps.

Stephen Covey

The asanas are useful maps to explore yourself, but they are not the territory.

Donna Farhi

The map is not the territory.

Alfred Korzybski

I want that which is hilarious and that which is heartbreaking to occupy the same territory in the book because I think they very often occupy the same territory in life, much as we try to separate them.