There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can’t think without metaphors.
MARY CATHERINE BATESONHuman beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.
More Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes
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Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.
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Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.
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A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.
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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.
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The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.
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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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Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.
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.
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Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.
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Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.
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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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In many ways, constancy is an illusion.
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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.
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Solutions to problems often depend upon how they’re defined.
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The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.
MARY CATHERINE BATESON