When parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONThe past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.
More Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes
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Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.
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 -
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 -
The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
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 -
Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
In many ways, constancy is an illusion.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.
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 -
We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON






