Richard Bandler - Collected Quotes

"Deletion is a process by which we selectively pay attention to certain dimensions of our experience and exclude others. Take, for example, the ability that people have to filter out or exclude all other sound in a room full of people talking in order to listen to one particular person's voice. Using the same process, people are able to block themselves from hearing messages of caring from other people who are important to them. [...] Deletion reduces the world to proportions which we feel capable of handling. The reduction may be useful in some contexts and yet be the source of pain for us in others." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)

"Distortion is the process which allows us to make shifts in our experience of sensory data. Fantasy, for example, allows us to prepare for experiences which we may have before they occur. People will distort present reality when rehearsing a speech which they will later present. It is this process which has made possible all the artistic creations which we as humans have produced." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)

"Generalization is the process by which elements or pieces of a person's model become detached from their original experience and come to represent the entire category of which the experience is an example. bur ability to generalize is essential to coping with the world." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)

"Generalization may impoverish the client's model by causing loss of the detail and richness of their original experiences. Thus, generalization prevents them from making distinctions which would give them a fuller set of choices in coping with any particular situation. At the same time, the generalization expands the specific painful experience to the level of being persecuted by the universe (an insurmountable obstacle to coping)." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)

"Models are not intended to either reflect or construct a single objective reality. Rather, their purpose is to simulate some aspect of a possible reality. In NLP, for instance, it is not important whether or not a model is 'true' , but rather that it is 'useful' . In fact, all models can be perceived as symbolic or metaphoric, as opposed to reflective of reality. Whether the description being used is metaphorical or literal, the usefulness of a model depends on the degree to which it allows us to move effectively to the next step in the sequence of transformations connecting deeper structures and surface structures. Instead of 'constructing' reality, models establish a set of functions that serve as a tool or a bridge between deep structures and surface structures. It is this bridge that forms our 'understanding' of reality and allows us to generate new experiences and expressions of reality." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)

"The most pervasive paradox of the human condition which we see is that the processes which allow us to survive, grow, change, and experience joy are the same processes which allow us to maintain an impoverished model of the world - our ability to manipulate symbols, that is, to create models. So the processes which allow us to accomplish the most extraordinary and unique human activities are the same processes which block our further growth if we commit the error of mistaking the model of the world for reality." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)

"[…] there is an irreducible difference between the world and our experience of it. We as human beings do not operate directly on the world. Each of us creates a representation of the world in which we live - that is, we create a map or model which we use to generate our behavior. Our representation of the world determines to a large degree what our experience of the world will be, how we will perceive the world, what choices we will see available to us as we live in the world." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)

"To say that our communication, our language, is a system is to say that it has structure, that there is some set of rules which identify. I which sequences of words will make sense, will represent a model of our experience. In other words, our behavior when creating a I representation or when communicating is rule-governed behavior. Even though we are not normally aware of the structure in the process of representation and communication, that structure, the structure of language, can be understood in terms of regular patterns." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)

"We are almost never conscious of the way in which we order and structure the words we select. Language so fills our world that we move through it as a fish swims through water. Although we have little or no consciousness of the way in which we form our communication, our activity - the process of using language - is highly structured." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)