Alfred Korzybski

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

— Alfred Korzybski life

God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system wont

— Alfred Korzybski god

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

— Alfred Korzybski man

Whatever you say it is, it isnt.

— Alfred Korzybski hate

The analogy between the noises we make when these noises do not symbolize anything which exists, and the worthless checks we write when our bank balance is zero

— Alfred Korzybski write

If we consider that all we deal with represents constantly changing sub-microscopic, interrelated processes which are not, and cannot be identical with themselves, the old dictum that everything is identical with itself becomes in [todays understanding of the universe] a principle invariably false to facts.

— Alfred Korzybski understanding

A few philosophers really do important work. This applies to the so called critical philosophy and to the theory of knowledge or epistemology. This class of workers I call epistemologists to avoid the disagreeable implications of the term philosopher.

— Alfred Korzybski philosophy

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

— Alfred Korzybski man

In the rough, a symbol is a sign that stands for something Before a noise, etc., may become a symbol, something must exist for the symbol to symbolize.

— Alfred Korzybski

We should not be surprised that we find meaningless noises in the foundation of many old philosophies, and that from them arise most of the old philosophical fights and arguments.

— Alfred Korzybski men

Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.

— Alfred Korzybski words

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 words

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

— Alfred Korzybski men

The only usefulness of a map or a language depends on the similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map-languages.

— Alfred Korzybski world

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 words

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

— Alfred Korzybski life

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 character

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