The critical question about regret is whether experience led to growth and new learning. Some people seem to keep on making the same mistakes, while others at least make new ones. Regret and remorse can be either paralyzing or inspiring.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONEvery loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.
More Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes
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As we age we have not only to readdress earlier developmental crises but also somehow to find the way to three affirmations that may seem to conflict. … We have to affirm our own life. We have to affirm our own death. And we have to affirm love, both given and received.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Fear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.
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When parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Monotony 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 BATESON -
Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Insight, 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 BATESON -
Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Caring can be learned by all human beings, can be worked into the design of every life, meeting an individual need as well as a pervasive need in society.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON