The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Mary Catherine Bateson

Mary Catherine Bateson

Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.

Human, Eat, Human Beings

Mary Catherine Bateson

The family is changing, not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.

Understanding, Look, New

Mary Catherine Bateson

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.

Ending, Meaning, Timing

Mary Catherine Bateson

Fear is not a good teacher. The lessons of fear are quickly forgotten.

Good, Fear, Good Teacher

Mary Catherine Bateson

An encounter with other cultures can lead to openness only if you can suspend the assumption of superiority, not seeing new worlds to conquer, but new worlds to respect.

anthropology, culture, openness

Mary Catherine Bateson

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.

Mary Catherine Bateson

… as we age we have not only to readdress earlier developmental crises but also somehow to find the way to three affirmations that may seem to conflict. … We have to affirm our own life. We have to affirm our own death. And we have to affirm love, both given and received. [p. 88]

Mary Catherine Bateson

Since few people arrive at retirement with an understanding that this transition will involve a rethinking of who they are, an interim pattern has emerged, in which travel offers a way of fulfilling deferred daydreams of adventure while the next stage takes shape. [p. 31]

Mary Catherine Bateson

It’s all about being in control of myself as an older woman who lives alone, and it’s all about how I am going to do what I have to do to be as strong as I can be and be confident that I can do what I need to do as an older person. [p. 62]

Mary Catherine Bateson

Moving is both liberating and debilitating. Undertaken too late, it is a very stressful process, one that sometimes seems to catapult people into frail old age, and undertaken too soon, it may preempt other possibilities. [p. 38]

Mary Catherine Bateson

Sorting gets harder as time goes on–it requires a sort of ruthless decisiveness, while indecision results in endless dithering. Five moves, they say, equal a fire. But those who haven’t moved may begin to need a fire. [p. 38]

Mary Catherine Bateson

After all, most of us have lived lives based on commitments made without any way of knowing where they would lead. The uncertainty is an essential element in commitment, the acceptance of consequences an essential element in fidelity. [p. 80]