87 Quotes by Alfred Korzybski

Definitions create conditions.

...no thought, if it be non-mathematical in spirit, can be trusted, and, although mathematicians sometimes make mistakes, the spirit of mathematics is always right and always sound.

Indeed neither life nor science bothers about "essences"-they leave "essences" to metaphysics, which is neither life nor science.

A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.

An individual cannot be considered entirely sane of he is wholly ignorant of scientific method and structure of nature and so retains primitive semantic reactions.

An individual cannot be considered entirely sane if he is wholly ignorant of scientific method and structure of nature and so retains primitive semantic reactions.

The abuse of symbolism is like the abuse of food or drink: it makes people ill, and so their reactions become deranged.

Any proposition containing the word "is" creates a linguistic structural confusion which will eventually give birth to serious fallacies.

The objective level is not words, and cannot be reached by words alone. We must point our finger and be silent, or we will never reach this level.