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As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
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
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Would
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Sudden
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Moral
Gospels
Society
Adherence
Religion
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Death
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More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.
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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.
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Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.
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Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.
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Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
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Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
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The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is the past, and it is the future.
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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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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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Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas' - that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.
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Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.
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Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.
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Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.
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The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.
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The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.
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Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
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Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.
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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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There is no nature at an instant.
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Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
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