Gregory Bateson Quotations

Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.

Language commonly stresses only one side of any interaction.

Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement. This means that numbers can conceivably be accurate because there is a discontinuity between each integer and the next. Between two and three there is a jump. In the case of quantity, there is no such jump; and because jump is missing in the world of quantity, it is impossible for any quantity to be exact. You can have exactly three tomatoes. You can never have exactly three gallons of water. Always quantity is approximate.

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.

It is of first-class importance that our answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx should be in step with how we conduct our civilisation, and this should in turn be in step with the actual workings of living systems.

In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not D.N.A.

To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least two sets of interactions in time.

Money is always transitively valued. More money is supposedly always better than less money.

Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause.

There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong.

But epistemology is always and inevitably personal. The point of the probe is always in the heart of the explorer: What is my answer to the question of the nature of knowing?

If we pursue this matter further, we shall be told that the stable object is unchanging under the impact or stress of some particular external or internal variable or, perhaps, that it resists the passage of time.

It is, I claim, nonsense to say that it does not matter which individual man acted as the nucleus for the change. It is precisely this that makes history unpredictable into the future.

Official education was telling people almost nothing of the nature of all those things on the seashores, and in the redwood forests, in the deserts and in the plains.

Logic is a poor model of cause and effect.

We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future.

It is impossible, in principle, to explain any pattern by invoking a single quantity.

A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms.

Rather, for all objects and experiences, there is a quantity that has optimum value. Above that quantity, the variable becomes toxic. To fall below that value is to be deprived.

Synaptic summation is the technical term used in neurophysiology for those instances in which some neuron C is fired only by a combination of neurons A and B.

Every move we make in fear of the next war in fact hastens it.

It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist.

Members of weakly religious families get, of course, no religious training from any source outside the family.

Of all these examples, the simplest but the most profound is the fact that it takes at least two somethings to create a difference.

From the point of view of any agent who imposes a quantitative change, any change of pattern which may occur will be unpredictable or divergent.

The processes of perception are inaccessible; only the products are conscious and, of course, it is the products that are necessary.

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

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.

Without context words and actions have no meaning at all

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

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.

We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong

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.

The meaning of your communication is the response you get.

But the myth of power is, of course, a very powerful myth, and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it. It is a myth, which, if everybody believes in it, becomes to that extent self-validating. But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to various sorts of disaster.

Information is a difference that makes a difference.

Let's not pretend that mental phenomena can be mapped on to the characteristics of billiard balls.

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.

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

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?

The creature that wins against its environment destroys itself.

The map is not the territory (coined by Alfred Korzybski), and the name is not the thing named.

Most of us have lost that sense of unity of biosphere and humanity which would bind and reassure us all with an affirmation of beauty. Most of us do not today believe that whatever the ups and down of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.

Science probes; it does not prove.

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.

Things have to be done fast in America , and therefore therapy has to be brief.

Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.

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

All experience is subjective.

Wisdom is the intelligence of the system as a whole.

Women watched for the spectacular performances of the men , and there can be no reasonable doubt that the presence of an audience is a very important factor in shaping the men's behavior. In fact, it is probable that the men are more exhibitionistic because the women admire their performances. Conversely, there can be no doubt that the spectacular behavior is a stimulus which summons the audience together, promoting in the women the appropriate behavior.

After mastery comes artistry and not before.

Our initial sensory data are always "first derivatives," statements about differences which exist among external objects or statements about changes which occur either in them or in our relationship to them. Objects and circumstances which remain absolutely constant relative to the observer, unchanged either by his own movement or by external events, are in general difficult and perhaps always impossible to perceive. What we perceive easily is difference and change and difference is a relationship.

Play is the establishment and exploration of relationship.

The world is indeed only a small tide pool; disturb one part and the rest is threatened.

Science sometimes improves hypotheses and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except in the realms of totally abstract tautology. We can sometimes say that if such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such must follow absolutely. But the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again.

Life and 'Mind' are systemic processes.

Whatever the ups and downs of detail within our limited experience, the larger whole is primarily beautiful.

Creative thought must always contain a random component.

There are many matters and many circumstances in which consciousness is undesirable and silence is golden, so that secrecy can be used as a marker to tell us that we are approaching the holy.

Multiple descriptions are better than one.

Information consists of differences that make a difference.

There are no monotone "values" in biology.

Some tools of thought are so blunt that they are almost useless; others are so sharp that they are dangerous. But the wise man will have the use of both kinds.

In the nature of the case, an explorer can never know what he is exploring until it has been explored.

We are discovering today that several of the premises which are deeply ingrained in our way of life are simply untrue and become pathogenic when implemented with modern technology.

I shall argue that the problem of grace is fundamentally a problem of integration and what is to be integrated is the diverse parts of the mind - especially those multiple levels of which one extreme is called 'consciousness' and the other the 'unconscious'

Evolution has long been badly taught. In particular, students - and even professional biologists - acquire theories of evolution without any deep understanding of what problem these theories attempt to solve. They learn but little of the evolution of evolutionary theory.

In no system which shows mental characteristics can any part have unilateral control over the whole. In other words, the mental characteristics of the system are imminent, not in some part, but in the system as a whole.

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

The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.

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

Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].

Surrender to alcohol intoxication provides a partial and subjective shortcut to a more correct state of mind.

The wise legislator will only rarely initiate a new rule of behaviour; more usually he will confine himself to affirming in law what has already become the custom of the people.

Desired substance, things, patterns, or sequences of experience that are in some sense "good" for the organism - items of diet, conditions of life, temperature, entertainment, sex, and so forth - are never such that more of the something is always better than less of the something. Rather, for all objects and experiences, there is a quantity that has optimum value. Above that quantity, the variable becomes toxic. To fall below that value is to be deprived.

Perhaps there is no such thing as unilateral power. After all, the man in power depends on receiving information all the time from outside. He responds to that information just as much as he causes things to happen... it is an interaction, and not a lineal situation.

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

Number is different from quantity.

Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy we call mathematics.

It takes two to know one.

If it were possible adequately to present the whole of a culture , stressing every aspect exactly as appears in the culture itself, no single detail would appear bizarre or strange or arbitrary to the reader, but rather the details would all appear natural and reasonable as they do to the natives who have lived all their lives within the culture.

Schizophrenia --its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it--remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the "double bind"--a situation in which no matter what a person does, he "can't win." It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms

Prediction can never be absolutely valid and therefore science can never prove some generalization or even test a single descriptive statement and in that way arrive at final truth.

We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future. We shall never be able to say, "Ha! My perception, my accounting for that series, will indeed cover its next and future components," or "Next time I meet with these phenomena, I shall be able to predict their total course.

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.

What we mean by information the elementary unit of information is a difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continually transformed are themselves provided with energy. The pathways are ready to be triggered. We may even say that the question is already implicit in them.

Perhaps the attempt to achieve grace by identification with the animals was the most sensitive thing which was tried in the whole bloody history of religion .