Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONHuman beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONFear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONGoals too clearly defined can become blinkers.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONThe capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONAs you get up in the morning, as you make decisions, as you spend money, make friends, make commitments, you are creating a piece of art called your life.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONHuman beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONThere are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONMonotony and repetition are characteristic of many parts of life, but these do not become sources of conscious discomfort until novelty and entertainment are built up as positive experiences.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONWe are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONThe Christian tradition was passed on to me as a great rich mixture, a bouillabaisse of human imagination and wonder brewed from the richness of individual lives.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONLearning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONInsight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONA disgruntled reflection on my own life as a sort of desperate improvisation in which I was constantly trying to make something coherent from conflicting elements to fit rapidly changing settings.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONEvery loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONImprovisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONWorlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON