Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONSolutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONIn many ways, constancy is an illusion.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONThe capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONThe 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 BATESONImprovisation 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 BATESONThere are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.
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.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONCaring 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 BATESONEvery loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONWhat would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONWhen parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONWorlds 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 BATESONThe timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONInsight, 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 BATESONGoals too clearly defined can become blinkers.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONMost higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON