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About this quote

What does it mean?
Words are not the things they describe, and nothing exists in total isolation.
In plain terms
Language is not reality, and everything is connected to something else.
What can you take from it?
Remember that words are maps, not the territory they describe.

Where it applies

  • communication
  • science
  • philosophy

Putting it to work

  • avoid literalism
  • understand context

Questions to consider

  • How do words shape your view of reality?
  • Can anything truly exist alone?

Another view

Some things can be analyzed in isolation for scientific purposes.

More from Alfred Korzybski

  1. 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 …

    Permalink to quote #15
  2. It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.

    Permalink to quote #17
  3. Any proposition containing the word 'is' creates a linguistical structural confusion which will eventually give birth to serious fallacies.

    Permalink to quote #14

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