Gregory Bateson Quotes

Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.

History is, in its essentials, the science of change. It knows and it teaches that it is impossible to find two events that are ever exactly alike, because the conditions from which they spring are never identical.

It doesn't get better, it doesn't get worse, but it sure gets different!

What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the ever changing data of the senses.

When those closest to us respond to events differently than we do, when they seem to see the same scene as part of a different play, when they say things that we could not imagine saying in the same circumstances, the ground on which we stand seems to tremble and our footing is suddenly unsure.

Change is always subjective.

If anything is a surprise then there is not much difference between older and younger because the only thing that does make anybody older is that they cannot be surprised.

There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistance.

...he will go to his grave feeling cheated, never realizing that there isn't much difference between one woman and the other, that it is the loving that creates the difference.

It's hard keeping everything the same when the same things look and feel so different

Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.

He spent six hours examining things, trying to find a difference from their appearance on the previous day in the hope of discovering in them some change that would reveal the passage of time.

What goes around may come around, but it never ends up exactly the same place, you ever notice? Like a record on a turntable, all it takes is one groove's difference and the universe can be on into a whole 'nother song.

There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.

Can you tell the difference between them?

here is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything.

Nature does not turn out her work according to a single pattern; she prides herself upon her power of variation.

And that point is, it doesn't matter how long you've known somebody. People change. Or you don't really know them as well as you thought you did in the first place.

We do make a difference - one way or the other. We are responsible for the impact of our lives. Whatever we do with whatever we have, we leave behind us a legacy for those who follow.

Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.

I came to Nantes two-years-ago and it's much the same today, except that it's totally different.

You are asking, 'Is the concept of soul mates more useful than marriage?' Concepts don't matter. What matters is your understanding. You can change the word marriage to the word soul mates, but you are the same. You will make the same hell out of soul mates as you have been making out of marriage - nothing has changed, only the word, the label. Don't believe in labels too much.

It is a matter of perspective, the difference between opponent and partner," Tsukiko says. "You step to the side and the same person can be either or both or something else entirely. It is difficult to know which face is true.