A Quote by Gregory Bateson

It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.

Gregory Bateson

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Devoted Fifty Life Professional Professional Life Riddle Sphinx Years

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Gregory Bateson
British - Scientist
May 9, 1904 - July 4, 1980

A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms.

Gregory Bateson

The population question is the real riddle of the sphinx, to which no political Oedipus has as yet found the answer. In view of the ravages of the terrible monster over-multiplication, all other riddle sink into insignificance.

Thomas Huxley

The Sphinx-riddle. Solve it, or be torn to bits, is the decree.

D. H. Lawrence

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved.

Heinrich Heine

It's like the riddle of the Sphinx... why are there so many great unmarried women, and no great unmarried men?

Sarah Jessica Parker

I always said marriage should be a fifty-fifty proposition. He should be at least fifty years old, and have at least fifty-million dollars.

Zsa Zsa Gabor

It is of first-class importance that our answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx should be in step with how we conduct our civilisation, and this should in turn be in step with the actual workings of living systems.

Gregory Bateson

But the solution to the riddle of life and space and time lies outside space and time. For, as it should be abundantly clear by now, nothing inside a frame can state, or even ask, anything about that frame. The solution, then, is not the finding of an answer to the riddle of existence, but the realization that there is no riddle. This is the essence of the beautiful, almost Zen Buddhist closing sentences of the Tracticus: "For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist."

Paul Watzlawick

I had dreamed my life for nearly fifty years (I am about to be fifty-nine). But, you see, there are two tones in Les Mats: the echo of this condemnation and a mitigation of that severity.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Fifty years ago, the spoken word reigned, but during the last fifty years, the power has gone over to pictures.

Pipilotti Rist

You're not gonna get through life without being worshipful or devoted to something. You're either devoted to your job, or to your desires. So the best way to spend your life is to try to be devoted to prayer, to Allah.

Mos Def

Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man in his endowment with personal capacities.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Well, I believe life is a Zen koan, that is, an unsolvable riddle. But the contemplation of that riddle - even though it cannot be solved - is, in itself, transformative. And if the contemplation is of high enough quality, you can merge with the divine.

Tom Robbins

Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving forever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life?

Ludwig Wittgenstein

All is a riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Quote by Gregory Bateson

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