List of Mary Catherine Bateson Quotes

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.

Worlds Can Be Found By A Child And An Adult Bending Down And Looking Together Under The Grass Stems Or At The Skittering Crabs In A Tidal Pool.

In Many Ways, Constancy Is An Illusion.

Jazz Exemplifies Artistic Activity That Is At Once Individual And Communal, Performance That Is Both Repetitive And Innovative, Each Participant Sometimes Providing Background Support And Sometimes Flying Free.

A Suprising Number Of Physicians Manage To Continue To Care About Persons Even After The Rigors Of Medical Training.

Orthodox Judaism Is A Thicket Of Detailed Injunctions, Biblical Commandments Elaborated During Centuries Of Prohibited Proselytizing, Functioning To Limit Interaction With Outsiders. At The Opposite Extreme, Islam, Still The Most Rapidly Expanding Of Faiths, Demands Little Immediate Knowledge From Those Who Would Convert. The Convert Is Permitted To Enter And Then To Learn By Participation, Although There Are Plenty Of Detailed Regulations And Abstruse Theological Ideas To Be Pursued Later, And The Regulations Do Effectively Separate Believers From Nonbelievers.

The Christian Tradition Was Passed On To Me As A Great Rich Mixture, A Bouillabaisse Of Human Imagination And Wonder Brewed From The Richness Of Individual Lives.

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.

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.

Often Continuity Is Visible Only In Retrospect.

Fluidity And Discontinuity Are Central To The Reality In Which We Live.

The Capacity To Combine Commitment With Skepticism Is Essential To Democracy.