87 Quotes by Alfred Korzybski

One would have to say “in the end everything is a gag, etc” because everything is infinitely more than just a gag. The same applies to other “is”-statements such as “Laughter is an instant vacation”

We humans, through old habits, and because of the inherent structure of human knowledge have a tendency to make static, definite, and, in a way, absolutistic one-valued statements. But when we fight absolutism, we quite often establish, instead, some other dogma equally silly and harmful. For instance, an active atheist is psycho-logically as unsound as a rabid theist.

Law was always made by the few and in general for the purpose of preserving the “existing order,” or for the reestablishment of the old order and the punishment of the offenders against it.

Say wharever you choose about the object, and wharever you might say it is not. Or, in other words: wharever you might say the object is, well it is not.

No reflecting reader can deny that the passing off, on an unsuspecting listener, of noises for words, or symbols, must be classified as a fraud, or that we pass to the other fellow contagious semantic disturbances.

Whatever you say it is, it isn't.