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

"Truth, on the contrary of what usually is assumed, is not an ideal reflection of something real, but rather a product of free activity by the human spirit, which would nowhere exist, would we not create it by ourselves..."
- Rudolf Steiner

"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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Revised 3rd Edition of Kenneth G. Johnson's succinct and comprehensive outline of general semantics. Edited by Steve Stockdale, Reflections of Ken Johnson by Gregg Hoffmann and Andrea Johnson. Includes revised and expanded bibliography, updated text and examples, with over 60 pertinent quotations. A great supplement for studying general semantics. 50 pages. 8.5 by 11 inches. Softcover.

$9.95

Robert P. Pula. Since the publication of Science and Sanity 70 years ago, general semantics students and teachers could have benefited from a book of clear but rigorous explanations of general semantics formulations and terminology. Robert Pula, former lead lecturer at the Institute of General Semantics, is eminently qualified as the author of this book. Excerpt from the guide:
abstracting: A most useful thing to do when first encountering the term abstracting as used in general-semantics is to divest yourself of your accustomed reactions to the term as used in the culture-at-large. In Korzybski’s system, abstracting represents so much more than and so much that is different from what it does in everyday (and legal, philosophical, and aesthetic) vocabularies, that clinging to those usages may block you from appreciating what Korzybski intended.
"Every serious student of general semantics should read this book. Pula’s Glossary is a very important contribution to general semantics." — Gregory Sawin, Editor, Thinking & Living Skills: General Semantics for Critical Thinking 125 + x pages. 6 by 9 inches. Softcover.

$12.95

Bruce I. Kodish, Ph.D. Dare to Inquire This book is about the need for adult humans to ‘grow up’. Especially now, it is not hard to denounce intolerance and fanaticism and want to uproot it. The question remains, How? — How do we do it? Can we stop an apparently accelerating, world-wide movement toward fundamentalism, despotism and despair? The author shares his main sources of personal urgency about this question.

$17.95

Edward MacNeal. A new kind of guide to the maps people use in making up their minds. "We've all observed the obviously different decision-making approaches people use. We usually explain these differences away. This book turns things around. It treats every decision-making approach as useful somewhere." Russell Joyner, former editor of ETC: A Review of General Semantics. 144 pages.

$12.95

These two papers by New York City educators Martin H. Levinson, Ph.D., and his wife, Katherine Liepe-Levinson, Ph.D., apply general semantics to two social issues that pervade middle and high schools - Student Alienation and Bullying. Levinson's 17-page paper, "A General Semantics Curriculum to Reduce Alienation" provides a complete 12-lesson curriculum that resulted from his research with 8th and 9th-graders in New York City public Schools. The second paper, "A General Semantics Approach to School-Age Bullying" by both Martin and Katherine will be published in the January 2005 edition of ETC: A Review of General Semantics and addresses a detailed 4-step process to deal with bullying. 31 total pages, 8.5x11 inches.

$3.95

Susan Presby Kodish and Bruce I. Kodish, Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics, Revised 2nd Edition. Foreword by Albert Ellis, Ph.D., (2001), 238 pp. A concise lively introduction to general semantics, “...it applies Alfred Korzybski’s brilliant general semantics philosophy to its readers’ everyday lives and shows them how to live more sanely in a still highly irrational and partially insane world.” (From the Foreword by Albert Ellis.)

$14.95

Practical Fairytales for Everyday Living provides twenty-five highly fanciful stories featuring characters who successfully battle a variety of personal problems and mishaps through the formulations of general semantics, a science-based "self-help" system designed to assist individuals to better evaluate and understand everyday difficulties. (Steve Allen, polymath and author of numerous books, including Dumbth: 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter, lists as Idea Number 81: Learn general semantics.) While the stories are not true in the literal sense of that word, the British pundit G. K. Chesterton observed that "Fairy tales are more than true- not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten."

$11.95

Charles G. Russell. This book is not about culture and language per se. It focuses on the interactions of language, culture, perceptions, and behavior. An important theme is that language and cognition combine with direct experiences and contribute to 'indirect perception.' Although written for college students and designed for use by teachers, the book provides a strong link between some formulations of GS and many subjects taught in college. 255 pages, 7.5x9.25 inches, softcover. Institute of General Semantics. 2004 (Third Printing)

$14.95

Lyman J. Houfek. Follow the story, which introduces principles of critical thinking and precise communication. For all those young at heart who want to improve their daily thinking habits. 138 pages.

$7.95

Martin H. Levinson.
In these times of rapid change and constant upheaval, can we learn to think and communicate more effectively at home, in school, on the job, and in the larger world? Based on the formulations of GS, Levinson answers yes, yes, and yes! Includes practical ways to improve your thinking ability, emotional self-management, creativity, and analyzes important social issues such as drugs and war.

$16.95

Raymond Gozzi, Jr. Forward by Neil Postman.
Metaphor is old, but always new. This book argues that metaphor is increasing in power due to the prominence of electronic media. Metaphors have the ability to define and structure our comprehension of new techonlogies--such as cyberspace, the Information Superhighway, the Computer Virus, Hot and Cool Media. Media technologies are also being internalized as metaphors, or cognitive models, for processes of consciousness and cognition. The computer is internalized as a model of the brain, and the television as a metaphor for the conduct of discourse. These metaphors illuminate, but they also cast shadows. Finally, the forms of electronic media, which emphasize concrete and iconic symbolism, present descriptions of the world which contrast with the prevailing cultural descriptions. This leads to pressure to produce metalanguages to deal with epistemological conflicts.

This book also describes theories of metaphor from Aristotle to current cognitive linguistics; gives a history of metaphor in oral, writing, print, and electronic cultures; and provides guidelines for How to Do a Metaphorical Analysis which should be useful for students at all levels.

ISBN 1-57273-123-0

$32.50

The December 2004 special issue, "General Semantics Across the Curriculum" with a tribute to Allen Walker Read. Contains 40 articles from the IGS archives of ETC and the General Semantics Bulletin from 1935 to 1987. A terrific collection that illustrates the breadth of GS applications across the curriculum. 270 pages.

$10.00

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