If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.
Alfred KorzybskiThe map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a 'semantic disturbance' is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.
Alfred KorzybskiHe who learns and learns and yet does not know what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows.
Alfred KorzybskiThe present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'
Alfred KorzybskiThese 'philosophers', etc., seem unaware, to give a specific example, that by teaching and preaching 'identity', which is empirically non-existent in this actual world, they are neurologically training future generations in the pathological identifications found in the 'mentally' ill or maladjusted.
Alfred Korzybski