Fear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONSharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.
More Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes
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The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
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.
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Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.
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The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.
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Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.
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What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.
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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 -
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 -
We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
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Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.
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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 -
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.
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There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.
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Jazz exemplifies artistic activity that is at once individual and communal, performance that is both repetitive and innovative, each participant sometimes providing background support and sometimes flying free.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
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