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 BATESONWe are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
More Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes
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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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Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
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 -
The past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
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.
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 -
We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON -
Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.
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Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.
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 -
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 -
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 -
Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON