Quote #9

Bankers, priests, lawyers,... politicians, [and news media] constitute one class [of our rulers] and work together. They do not produce any values but manipulate the values produced by others, and often pass signs for no value at all. Scientists and teachers also comprise a ruling class. They produce the main values mankind has, but, at present, they do not realize this. They are, in the main, ruled by the cunning methods of the first class.

More from Alfred Korzybski

  1. If a psychiatric and scientific enquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
  2. Our rulers: politicians, 'diplomats', bankers, priests of every description, economists, lawyers, etc. and the majority of teachers ... ign…
  3. 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…
  4. There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
  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. God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won't. (Korzybski states that it is not his quote in S&S)
  7. The map is not the territory ... The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map...
  8. It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic sy…

All Alfred Korzybski quotes