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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.
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
One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.
Alfred North Whitehead
Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.
Alfred North Whitehead
No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.
Alfred North Whitehead
Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
Alfred North Whitehead
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
Democracy...is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only a half dozen unbelievers in America, their well-being would be a test of our democracy.
Alfred North Whitehead
We must produce a great age, or see the collapse of the upward striving of our race.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
Alfred North Whitehead
Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.
Alfred North Whitehead
The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.
Alfred North Whitehead
It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately destroy the instincts but until this has occurred, words do not count.
Alfred North Whitehead
Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.
Alfred North Whitehead
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
Alfred North Whitehead
