Gregory Bateson Quotes

Culture affects development and development affects culture as well.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.

What is being said is the effect of something that has happened; at the same time, what is being said is in itself something happening, which will, in turn, leave its effect.

The relationship between reader and writer is reciprocal in a way. We co-create each other. We are constantly emerging out of the relationship we have with others.

You cannot do only one thing.

Everything happens through relationships.

Love is a positive, symbiotic, reciprocal flow between two or more entities.

In a broad systems sense, an organism's environment is indistinguishable from the organism itself.

No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.

Defense is attack, attack is defense, each being the cause and result of the other.

Everything is deeply intertwingled.

The secret of the world is the tie between person and event. Person makes event and event person.

There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.

Everything...affects everything

What is the cause, though, of the growth of an acorn? The oak that is to come! What is to happen in the future is then the cause of what is occurring now; and, at the same time, what occurred in the past is also the cause of what is happening now. In addition, a great number of things round about, on every side, are causing what is happening now. Everything, all the time, is causing everything else

In order to have influence, you have to be influenced.

Phenomena intersect; to see but one is to see nothing.

Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself... We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts.

Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin's bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings.

All things arise in unison. Thereby we see their return.

You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.

If everything in the universe depends upon everything else in a fundamental way, it might be impossible to get close to a full solution by investigating parts of the problem in isolation.

Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.

Sure, that's what I mean,' Doc Daneeka said. 'A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.' Yossarian knew what he meant. That's not what I meant,' Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian began scratching his back.

Everything comes to us from others. To Be is to belong to someone.