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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the distinction between language and reality, suggesting that objects cannot be fully understood in isolation.
Alfred Korzybski's quote highlights the fundamental idea that words and language are merely representations of reality, not the reality itself. He asserts that no object exists in complete isolation from its context and environment, underscoring the interconnectedness of concepts and the limitations of language in expressing the full essence of what is being described.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the nature of reality and perception.
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.
To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
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 found in structure, and structure alone.
Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state...
Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.
A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.
Think of God; attachments will gradually drop away. If you wait till all desires disappear before starting your devotion and prayer, you will have to wait for a very long time indeed.
There either is or is not, that’s the way things are. The colour of the day. The way it felt to be a child. The saltwater on your sunburnt legs. Sometimes the water is yellow, sometimes it’s red. But what colour it may be in memory, depends on the day. I’m not going to tell you the story the way it happened. I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.
Turn in upon yourselves, get into your closets, and now resolve to dwell there. You have been strangers to this work too long; you have kept other vineyards too long; you have trifled about the borders of religion too long. Will you now resolve to look better to your hearts? Will you hate and come out of the crowds of business and clamors of the world and retire yourselves more than you have done? Oh, that this day you would resolve upon it!
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