As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure … - Alfred Korzybski

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Alfred Korzybski

As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances.

Believe, Faith, Gambling, Knowledge, Obsolete, Things

Same Author Quotes

Every language having a structure, by the very nature of language, reflects in its own structure that of the world as assumed by those who evolved the language. In other words, we read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use.

Evolved, Having, Language, Use, Words, World

It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification - the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life.

Agreement, Discovery, Economic, Mathematics, Two

I want to make clear only that words are not the things spoken about, and that there is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.

Ideas, Isolation, Make, Want, Words

Identity is invariably false to facts.

Facts, False, Identity, Invariably, Self Esteem

It is a fallacy of the old schools to divide man into parcels, elements, thoughts, emotions, intuitions, etc. All human faculties consist of an interconnected whole.

Faculties, Intuition, Men, Parcels, School, Whole