Alfred Korzybski Quotes

Alfred Korzybski — Polish Scientist born on June 03, 1879, died on March 01, 1950

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"... (wikipedia)

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

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

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.

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.

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

Alfred Korzybski Quotes

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