Fear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.
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.
More Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes
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Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.
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Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.
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Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.
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The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.
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As 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.
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The past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.
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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.
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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.
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Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.
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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.
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In many ways, constancy is an illusion.
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There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.
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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.
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Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.
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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