Quotes by Mary Catherine Bateson

In many ways, constancy is an illusion.  After all, our ancestors were immigrants, many of them moving on every few years; today we are migrants in time.  Unless teachers can hold up a model of lifelong learning and adaptation, graduates are likely to find themselves trapped into obsolescence as the world changes around them.  Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.

"We are not what we know, but what we are willing to learn."

"We are not what we know, but what we are willing to learn."

Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.   

Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps.