Gregory Bateson Quotes

Don't simply dismiss a coincidence and let it drift away. Life is totally interconnected. These unusual 'things' are simply connections that surprise you because you aren't used to seeing life except in fragments. Now it is beginning to piece itself together.

I tend not to dwell on the parallels between chess and business, chess and the martial arts, or any two things for that matter, because the truth is that all pursuits are connected if we gain an eye for the thematic links.

Whoever dedicates his life to searching out particular connections of nature will spontaneously be confronted with the question how they harmoniously fit into the whole.

There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and non-interfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are eternal.

Nowhere on the shore is the relation of a creature to its surroundings a matter of a single cause and effect; each living thing is bound to its world by many threads, weaving the intricate design of the fabric of life.

Science reveals that all life on Earth is one.

I'm pretty good at seeing like a lot of different things happening at once and putting them in a pattern and figuring out how you can rearrange it so it might have a better outcome.

One can find traces of every life in each life.

There is a seamless web to life.. all life is sacred.

The spirit is the life of the body seen from within, and the body the outward manifestation of the life of the spirit-the two being really one.

We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it.

Everything has a spirit and it's all connected. If you think about that, if you live your life by it, then you're less likely to cause any hurt. It's like how our bodies go back into the ground when we die, so that connects us to the earth. If you dump trash, you're dumping it on your and my ancestors. Or to bring it down to its simplest level: treat everything and everybody the way you want to be treated, because when you hurt someone, you're only hurting yourself.

Inspiration is in seeing a part of the whole with the part of the whole in you.

Atoms are a relationship of energy. You are a relationship of energy interacting with another person who is another complex relationship of energy. We all exchange more than words with each other. . . We are made of the same substance as rocks and stars. .. We are an exotic cocktail living on this planet. .. We live in this universe which is a self-transcending reality

Each element of the cosmos is positively woven from all the others...The universe holds together, and only one way of considering it is really possible, that is, to take it as a whole, in one piece.

We are educated to be amazed by the infinite variety of life forms in nature. We are, I believe, only at the beginning of being flabbergasted by its unity.

One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.

We are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relation of man to man. What is important is the relation of man to all life.

The same stream of life that runs through the world runs through my veins night and day.

Finding patterns is the essence of wisdom

That's not something that we've gone in thinking 'Right! How are we going to examine that now?' It's just when you take a step back you see that they're actually all sort of in that mode.

I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any part of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water.

Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are known, or believed to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations whereas species were formerly thus connected.

A parable: A man was examining the construction of a cathedral. He asked a stone mason what he was doing chipping the stones, and the mason replied, "I am making stones." He asked a stone carver what he was doing. "I am carving a gargoyle." And so it went, each person said in detail what they were doing. Finally he came to an old woman who was sweeping the ground. She said. "I am helping build a cathedral." ...Most of the time each person is immersed in the details of one special part of the whole and does not think of how what they are doing relates to the larger picture.