A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms.
Gregory Bateson

Number is different from quantity.
Gregory Bateson

All experience is subjective.
Gregory Bateson

Members of weakly religious families get, of course, no religious training from any source outside the family.
Gregory Bateson

It is impossible, in principle, to explain any pattern by invoking a single quantity.
Gregory Bateson

We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future.
Gregory Bateson

Interesting phenomena occur when two or more rhythmic patterns are combined, and these phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another.
Gregory Bateson

In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA.
Gregory Bateson