The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONSharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.
More Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes
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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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Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.
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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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Fear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.
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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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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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Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.
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We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
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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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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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There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.
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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.
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The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.
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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