Paul Watzlawick Quotes

The belief that one's own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.
Paul Watzlawick
Life, Ignorance, Reality

It is difficult to imagine how any behavior in the presence of another person can avoid being a
communication of one's own view of the nature of one's relationship with that person and how it
can fail to influence that person.
Paul Watzlawick
Communication, Views, Influence

You cannot not communicate. Every behavior is a kind of communication. Because behavior does
not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behavior), it is not possible not to communicate.
Paul Watzlawick
Communication, Doe, Kind

As I have already said, the belief that one's own view of reality is the only reality is the most
dangerous or all delusions. It becomes still more dangerous if it is coupled with the missionary
zeal to enlighten the rest of the world, whether the rest of the world wishes to be enlightened or
not. To refuse to embrace wholeheartedly a particular definition of reality, to dare to see the
world differently can become a "think crime" in a truly Orwellian sense as we get steadily closer to
1984.
Paul Watzlawick
Reality, Thinking, Views

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That we do not discover reality but rather invent it is quite shocking for many people. And the
shocking part about it - according to the concept of radical constructivism - is that the only thing
we can ever know about the real reality (if it even exists) is what it is not. It is only with the
collapse of our constructions of reality that we first discover that the world is not the way we
imagine.
Paul Watzlawick
Real, People, World

Maturity Is The Ability To Do Something Even Though Your Parents Have Recommended It.
Paul Watzlawick
Maturity, Parent, Ability

But the solution to the riddle of life and space and time lies outside space and time. For, as it
should be abundantly clear by now, nothing inside a frame can state, or even ask, anything about
that frame. The solution, then, is not the finding of an answer to the riddle of existence, but the
realization that there is no riddle. This is the essence of the beautiful, almost Zen Buddhist closing
sentences of the Tracticus: "For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be
expressed. The riddle does not exist."
Paul Watzlawick
Beautiful, Buddhist, Lying

Frank Farrelly. . .must be thought of with respect (perhaps even delight?) by his clients who have
so far played the game of therapy with their therapists, but, I am afraid, also a shocking example
for those therapists who, in Laing's words, 'are playing at not playing a game'.
Paul Watzlawick
Games, Delight, Clients

A self-fulfilling prophecy is an assumption or prediction that, purely as a result of having been

made, cause the expected or predicted event to occur and thus confirms its own 'accuracy.'
Paul Watzlawick
Self, Causes, Events

Our everyday, traditional ideas of reality are delusions which we spend substantial parts of our
daily lives shoring up, even at the considerable risk of trying to force facts to fit our definition of
reality instead of vice versa. And the most dangerous delusion of all is that there is only one
reality.
Paul Watzlawick
Reality, Ideas, Risk
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It follows from the assumption of a universally valid ideology, just as night follows day, that other
positions are heresy.
Paul Watzlawick
Night, Atheism, Assumption

Radical constructivism, thus, is radical because it breaks with convention and develops a theory of
knowledge in which knowledge does not reflect an 'objective' ontological reality.
Paul Watzlawick
Reality, Doe, Break

The counterpart of the suicide is the seeker; but the difference between them is slight.
Paul Watzlawick
Suicide, Differences, Counterparts

Man never ceases to seek knowledge about the objects of his experiences, to understand their
meaning for his existence and to react to them according to his understanding. Finally, out of the
sum total of the meanings that he has deduced from his contacts with numerous single objects of
his environment there grows a unified view of the world into which he finds himself "thrown" (to
use an existentialist term again) and this view is of the third order.
Paul Watzlawick
Men, Views, Order

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does
not exist...
Paul Watzlawick
Answers, Doe, Riddle

It obviously makes a difference whether we consider ourselves as pawns in a game whose rules
we call reality or as players of the game who know that the rules are real only to the extent that
we have created or accepted them, and that we can change them.
Paul Watzlawick
Real, Player, Games

Usually a person relates to another under the tacit assumption thatthe other shares his view of
reality, that indeed there is only onereality....
Paul Watzlawick
Reality, Views, Assumption

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This is the secret of propaganda: To totally saturate the person, whom the propaganda wants to
lay hold of, with the ideas of the propaganda, without him even noticing that he is being
saturated.
Paul Watzlawick
Ideas, Secret, Want

The suicide arrives at the conclusion that what he is seeking does not exist; the seeker concludes
that what he has not yet looked in the right place
Paul Watzlawick
Suicide, Doe, Conclusion

If we have dwelled on Godel's work at some length, is it because we see it in the mathematical
analogy of what we would call the the ultimate paradox of man's existence. Man is ultimately
subject and object of his quest. While the question whether the mind can be considered to be
anything like a formalized system, as defined in the preceding paragraph, is probably
unanswerable, his quest for an understanding of the meaning of his existence is an attempt at
formalization.
Paul Watzlawick
Men, Understanding, Mind

Maturity is doing what you think is best, even when your mother thinks it's a good idea.
Paul Watzlawick
Mother, Thinking, Maturity

Above all, in comedy, and again and again since classical times, passages can be found in which
the level of representation is interrupted by references to the spectators or to the fictive nature of
the play.
Paul Watzlawick
Nature, Play, Levels

In other words, what is supposedly found is an invention whose inventor is unaware of his act of
invention, who considers it as something that exists independently of him; the invention then
becomes the basis of his world view and actions.
Paul Watzlawick
Views, World, Action

You cannot not communicate.

Paul Watzlawick
Design, Graphic Design, Communicate

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Paul Watzlawick

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Born: July 25, 1921

Died: March 31, 2007
Occupation: Psychologist
Cite this Page: Citation

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