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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

Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Eat Food Human
The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Capacity Commitment Democracy Essential
A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Care Management Medicine Surprise Training
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

Ability Color Culture Vision World
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

Believe Learning Myself Talk Understand
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 BATESON

Criticism Growth Mistake Oneself Question Regret
The past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Empowerment Future Leadership Present
The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Human Learning Metaphor Species Story Thinking
The 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 BATESON

Greatness Imagination Live Tradition
Worlds 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

Children Finding Togetherness World
Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Creativity Establishment Improvisation Way
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

Care Design Human Learning Need Society Work
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

Character Entertainment Experience Life Positive Repetition
Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Continue Fluid Live Reality
A 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 BATESON

Conflict Desperate Element Improvisation Reflection
Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Philosophy Retrospect Visible