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In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.

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
Wisdom
Knowledge
Sense
Swallowed
Shrinks
Details
Principles
Grows

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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In all education the main cause of failure is staleness.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.
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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
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[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.
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The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
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Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts... Seek simplicity and distrust it.
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There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.
Alfred North Whitehead
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In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Art heightens the sense of humanity. It gives an elation to feeling which is supernatural...A million sunsets will not spur us on towards civilization. It requires Art to evoke into consciousness the finite perfections which lie ready for human achievement.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.
Alfred North Whitehead
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An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.
Alfred North Whitehead
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We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad... Truth matters because of beauty.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operations of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish. It is in a way the most civilised of all the cardinals, and its use is only forced on us by the needs of cultivated modes of thought.
Alfred North Whitehead