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Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

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
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Lasts
Last
Religion
Human
Humans
Savagery
Refuge
Atheism

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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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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Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.
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The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.
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No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.
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In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world
Alfred North Whitehead
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The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.
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The many become one and are increased by one.
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Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
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...the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.
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Religion is what a man does with his solitariness.
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People make the mistake of talking about 'natural laws.' There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature.
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One and one make two assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstance are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change.
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The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.
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Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
Alfred North Whitehead
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But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements ... 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.
Alfred North Whitehead