A Quote by Alfred Korzybski

The map is not the territory. — © Alfred Korzybski
The map is not the territory.

Quote Topics

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.
The map is not the territory... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map.
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.
The map is not the territory, but you can't fold up the territory and put it in the glove compartment.
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.
What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mind. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately, we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or a culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive.
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.
The map isn't always the territory, and you have to kind of walk through it to get a feel for it.
The map is not the territory (coined by Alfred Korzybski), and the name is not the thing named.
I was born in a territory called Biran, in the eastern region of Cuba. It's known by that name, although it has never appeared on a map.
What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else.
The dream is not a map. A poem is not the territory. The dreamer reclines in a barbershop carpeted with Afro turf. In the dark some soul yells. It hurts to walk barefoot on cowrie shells.
AQAL is a map of samsara, a map of the prison, but if you gonna make a prison brake,you need a good map. (laughter)
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.
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.
Your map of Africa is really quite nice. But my map of Africa lies in Europe. Here is Russia, and here... is France, and we're in the middle - that's my map of Africa.
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