Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
Interpretation
Words do not equate to the true essence of what they describe, and nothing exists in complete isolation.
This quote by Alfred Korzybski highlights two fundamental concepts: first, that language is inherently limited and cannot fully capture the reality of the objects or ideas it refers to; second, that everything exists in a context and is related to other things, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all entities. In doing so, Korzybski invites us to be mindful of the limitations of language and the importance of context in understanding the world around us.
In practice
In a lecture on the philosophy of language.
As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances.
To use words to sense reality is like going with a lamp to search for darkness.
If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.
I want to make clear only that words are not the things spoken about, and that there is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
It is given to no human being to stereotype a set of truths, and walk safely by their guidance with his mind's eye closed.
The tragedy is that we cannot believe the dogmas of religion and metaphysics if we have the strict methods of truth in heart and head, but on the other hand, we have become through the development of humanity so tenderly suffering that we need the highest kind of means of salvation and consolation: whence arises the danger that man may bleed to death through the truth that he realises.
The evils that arise to us from the structure of the material universe are neither trivial nor few, yet the history of political society sufficiently shows that man is, of all other beings, the most formidable enemy to man.
Every star may be a sun to someone.
Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.
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