Alfred North Whitehead Quotes
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A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.
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The ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction.
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More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook. This is transferable from country to country, and from race to race, wherever there is a rational society.
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A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content.
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I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren’t.
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Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.
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Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.
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For the kingdom of heaven is with us today.
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Identification of rhythm as the causal counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.
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Systems, scientific and philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.
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Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
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There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
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The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.
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The rhythm is then the life, in the sense in which it can be said to be included within nature.
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In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat; but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards victory.
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Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought.
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The Function of Reason (1929), Beacon Books, 1958, p. 16
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The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
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A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.
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The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
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No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.
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The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and, if need be, die for it.
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The main importance of Francis Bacon’s influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.
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Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.