Quote #3

If we consider that all we deal with represents constantly changing sub-microscopic, interrelated processes which are not, and cannot be 'identical with themselves', the old dictum that 'everything is identical with itself' becomes in [today's understanding of the universe] a principle invariably false to facts.' (Note: Korzybski used '1933' to specify the current understanding. This editor has subsituted the 'more general' form: [today's understanding...])

More from Alfred Korzybski

  1. Any organism must be treated as-a-whole; in other words, that an organism is not an algebraic sum, a linear function of its elements, but a…
  2. The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all '…
  3. The word is not the thing.
  4. The map is not the territory ... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map...
  5. The main thesis of this non-Aristotelian system is that as yet we all (with extremely few exceptions) copy animals in our nervous processes…
  6. Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols.... we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule th…
  7. If a psychiatric and scientific enquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
  8. Bankers, priests, lawyers,... politicians, [and news media] constitute one class [of our rulers] and work together. They do not produce any…

All Alfred Korzybski quotes