MARY CATHERINE BATESON

Fluidity and discontinuity are central to the reality in which we live.

Fear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.

The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.

Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.

There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors.

Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.

Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.

Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.

The family is changing, not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.

Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.

...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.

In many ways, constancy is an illusion. After all, our ancestors were immigrants, many of them moving on every few years; today we are migrants in time. Unless teachers can hold up a model of lifelong learning and adaptation, graduates are likely to find themselves trapped into obsolescence as the world changes around them. Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.

Solutions to problems often depend upon how they're defined.

Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from one pattern to another: a potential translation in which narrative becomes parable and the once upon a time comes to stand for some renascent truth. This approach applies to all the incidents of everyday life: the phrase in the newspaper, the endearing or infuriating game of a toddler, the misunderstanding at the office. Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.

The caretaking has to be done. "Somebody's got to be the mommy." Individually, we underestimate this need, and as a society we make inadequate provision for it. Women take up the slack, making the need invisible as we step in to fill it.

I had repeatedly accepted inappropriate burdens, stepping in to do what needed to be done. In retrospect, I think I carried them well, but the cost was that I was chronically overloaded, weary, and short of time for politicking, smoothing ruffled feathers, and simply resting.

Rarely is it possible to study all of the instructions to a game before beginning to play, or to memorize the manual before turning on the computer. The excitement of improvisation lies not only in the risk of being involved but in the new ideas, as heady as the adrenaline of performance, that seems to come from nowhere.

In many ways, constancy is an illusion.

Monotony and repetition are characteristic of many parts of life, but these do not become sources of conscious discomfort until novelty and entertainment are built up as positive experiences.

What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.

A glad welcome to this affirmation by a group of psychologists that the self does not stop at the skin nor even with the circle of human relationships but is interwoven with the lives of trees and animals and soil; that caring for the deepest needs of persons and caring for our threatened planet are not in conflict.

When any relationship is characterized by difference, particularly a disparity in power, there remains a tendency to model it on the parent-child-relationship. Even protectiveness and benevolence toward the poor, toward minorities, and especially toward women have involved equating them with children.

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.