Gregory Bateson Quotes

The meaning of your communication is the response you get.

Without context words and actions have no meaning at all

Wisdom is the intelligence of the system as a whole.

The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.

A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.

The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.

We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.

The only way out is spiritual, intellectual, and emotional revolution in which, finally, we learn to experience first hand the interloping connections between person and person, organism and organism, action and consequence.

Information is a difference that makes a difference.

Somebody was saying to Picasso that he ought to make pictures of things the way they are-objective pictures. He mumbled that he wasn't quite sure what that would be. The person who was bullying him produced a photograph of his wife from his wallet and said, "There, you see, that is a picture of how she really is." Picasso looked at it and said, "She is rather small, isn't she? And flat?"

Yes, metaphor. That's how the whole fabric of mental interconnections holds together. Metaphor is right at the bottom of being alive.

It takes two to know one.

Play is the establishment and exploration of relationship.

What is the pattern that connects the crab to the lobster and the primrose to the orchid, and all of them to me, and me to you?

Interesting phenomena occur when two or more rhythmic patterns are combined, and these phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another.

What is true is that the idea of power corrupts. Power corrupts most rapidly those who believe in it, and it is they who will want it most. Obviously, our democratic system tends to give power to those who hunger for it and gives every opportunity to those who don't want power to avoid getting it. Not a very satisfactory arrangement if power corrupts those who believe in it and want it.

After mastery comes artistry and not before.

If a man achieves or suffers change in premises which are deeply embedded in his mind, he will surely find that the results of that change will ramify throughout his whole universe.

All experience is subjective.

The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of course you never do.

There are times when I catch myself believing that there is such a thing as something; which is separate from something else.

People are going to have to make themselves predictable, or the machines will get angry and kill them.

Pathology is a relatively easy thing to discuss, health is very difficult. This, of course, is one of the reasons why there is such a thing as the sacred, and why the sacred is difficult to talk about, because the sacred is peculiarly related to the healthy. One does not like to disturb the sacred, for in general, to talk about something changes it, and perhaps will turn it into a pathology.

Whenever we pride ourselves upon finding a newer, stricter way of thought or exposition … we lose something of the ability to think new thoughts. And equally, of course, whenever we rebel against the sterile rigidity of formal thought and exposition and let our ideas run wild, we likewise lose. As I see it, the advances in scientific thought come from a combination of lose and strict thinking, and this combination is the most precious tool of science.

No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.