We see what we see because we miss all the finer details.
- Alfred Korzybski

3 Questions: "What?"........."So what?"........."Now what?"
- Coro wisdom

"The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them."
- Albert Einstein

"The aim of education is the condition of suspended judgment on everything."
- George Santayana

"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered on a 10-foot chain."
- Adlai Stevenson

"Teaching and learning that lead to no significant change in behavior are practically worthless."
– Irving Lee

"Learning to un-learn to learn, for me, best describes the process of learning the discipline theoretically (verbally) and organismically."
– M. Kendig

"Learning is the gradual replacement of fantasy with fact."
- Gifford Pinchot

"The trouble with people is not so much with their ignorance as it is with their knowing so many things that are not so."
- William Alanson White

"You can't no more teach what you ain't learned than you can come from where you ain't been."
- Mark Twain

"A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it."
- Alfred Korzybski

"You can't step into the same river twice."
- Heraclitus

"All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions."
- Leonardo da Vinci

"Happiness is not something that happens….It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them."
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"We are always getting to live, but never living."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depend directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences."
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"God may forgive your sins. But your nervous system won't."
- Alfred Korzybski

"The self explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes an explorer of everything else."
- Elias Canetti

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
- Albert Einstein

"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."
- Mark Twain

"Time is but the stream I go fishing in."
- Henry David Thoreau

"It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and only lukewarm defenders among those who may do well under the new."
- Machiavelli

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw

"To progress, man must re-make himself, and he cannot re-make himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor."
- Alexis Carrel

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."
- Elvis Costello

Institute of General Semantics

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Books: Classic GS Texts

* SPECIAL PRICING * People in Quandaries. Wendell Johnson. One of the most popular college texts in general semantics, People in Quandaries deals with the "mechanics" of disappointments, frustrations and other sources of unhappiness. It carefully examines how linguistic misevaluations produce our feelings of inadequacy and failure; how our verbal habits can result in false "pictures" of ourselves and our environment; how our unreliable linguistic maps keep us in quandaries. The book then demonstrates how to recognize and change unrealistic ideals and aspirations; how to improve our ability to cope with the circumstances of an increasingly unpredictable world. An ideal gift to introduce friends to general semantics. 532 pages. 5¼ by 8¼ inches. Softcover.

$10.00

S. I. Hayakawa and Alan Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, Fifth Ed, (1990), 287 pp. Foreword by Robert MacNeil. Influential and well-written study of the role of language in human life. Hayakawa acknowledges his debt to Korzybski and the book has served as many people’s introduction to general semantics.

$13.95

* SPECIAL PRICING * Levels of Knowing and Existence: Studies In General Semantics, (1959), 2nd Ed. (1973). By Harry L. Weinberg. ISBN 0-910780-07-2. xiv +274 pp. Engaging discussion of perennial epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic problems. Contains a thorough comparison of general semantics as it relates to Maslow's theory of hierarchical needs. Sanford I. Berman, Ed., Logic and General Semantics: Writings of Oliver L. Reiser and Others, (1992), 212 pp. Reiser, a philosopher and one of Korzybski’s early fellow workers, wrote some valuable material on the philosophical, logical and scientific underpinnings of Korzybski’s work. This book includes Part I of Reiser’s THE PROMISE OF SCIENTIFIC HUMANISM and two of his other papers, as well as articles by Berman and others. It provides a thorough, readable account of Aristotelian and non-Aristotelian logics and orientations.

$6.00

Set of three books/booklets including:
Francis P. Chisholm, Introductory Lectures on General Semantics, 1944, 14th printing, (1983). ISBN 0-910780-05-6. vi + 126 pp. Focuses on the important contributions general semantics can make to general education and “the gravity of the problems involved in all science and human evaluation which arise from the necessary limitations of human formulations.”
T. C. Pollock and J. G. Spaulding, General Semantics Monograph III "A Theory of Meaning Analyzed: Critique of I. A. Richards' "Theory of Language." Supplementary Paper "The Lexicographer and General Semantics" by Allen Walker Read. Foreword by A. Korzybski and M. Kendig, (1942). ISBN 0-910780-03-X. xvi +64 pp. Especially valuable for its Foreword by Korzybski and Kendig, which includes a discussion of the "logical fate" diagram and consequences of a change in premises.
Marjorie A. Swanson, General Semantics Monograph IV – Scientific Epistemologic Backgrounds of General Semantics, (1959). ISBN 0-910780-04-8. viii + 81 pp. Six lectures given at a general semantics seminar. Develops an understanding of scientific methods, relates colloidal behavior to semantic reactions, deals with aspects of epistemology, and discusses ethical consequences derived from science. Can be profitably read in conjunction with Book III of Science and Sanity or as a necessary minimum of scientific awareness without which the reader's general semantics might degenerate into mere 'philosophy,' 'linguistics,' etc.

$8.00

J. Samuel Bois, The Art of Awareness. (1966). 4th Ed., Edited and with a Foreword by Gary David (1996), l + 381 pp. $22.50 Reorganized by Dr. David, this edition includes a biography of Bois. Bois suggested a new term, "epistemics," for the work that he elaborated from Korzybski's applied epistemology/theory of evaluation. The book emphasizes the broad aims of general semantics as a system of guided self awareness which focuses on improving our methods of thinking feeling, i.e., evaluative transactions.

$17.95

* SPECIAL PRICING * Irving J. Lee, Ph.D. Edited by Sanford I. Berman, Ph.D. 2nd Edition. In Language Habits in Human Affairs, highly respected general semantics educator Dr. Irving J. Lee reveals how our language habits lead to trouble. He then shows how to change such habits to develop more effective communication and thinking skills. This book helps us develop new awareness of the problems and difficulties involved in making accurate statements about ourselves and the world in which we live. It reveals how to discover the maladjustments, both personal and social, that have their roots in improper evaluation, because of false-to-fact language habits. Communication professionals, teachers, students, thinkers, writers, all who want to build better life skills through improved language habits, must read Language Habits in Human Affairs. 316 pages. 6 by 9 inches. Softcover.

$8.00

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