Alfred North Whitehead Quotes
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Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; … But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.
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Scientists, animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless, constitute an interesting subject for study.
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The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.
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Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.
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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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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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The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.
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What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.
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Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
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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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No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.
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The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
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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.
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The deliberate aim at Peace very easily passes into its bastard substitute, Anesthesia.
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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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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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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 term many presupposes the term one, and the term one presupposes the term many.
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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 English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.
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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 Function of Reason (1929), Beacon Books, 1958, p. 16
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The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.
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A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.