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No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
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More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
Alfred North Whitehead
Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose.
Alfred North Whitehead
Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.
Alfred North Whitehead
Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
I am sure that one secret of a successful teacher is that he has formulated quite clearly in his mind what the pupil has got to know in precise fashion. He will then cease from half-hearted attempts to worry his pupils with memorizing a lot of irrelevant stuff of inferior importance.
Alfred North Whitehead
You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.
Alfred North Whitehead
A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.
Alfred North Whitehead
There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.
Alfred North Whitehead
Every really new idea looks crazy at first.
Alfred North Whitehead
An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.
Alfred North Whitehead
The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.
Alfred North Whitehead
Life is the enjoyment of emotion, derived from the past and aimed at the future.
Alfred North Whitehead
Education which is not modern share the fate of all organic things which are kept too long.
Alfred North Whitehead
Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.
Alfred North Whitehead
In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.
Alfred North Whitehead
There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.
Alfred North Whitehead
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''
Alfred North Whitehead
