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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
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Precepts
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
It is the business of future to be dangerous.... The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
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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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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.
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The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.
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Spoken language is merely a series of squeaks.
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No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover.
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There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.
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Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.
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The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.
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Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
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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.
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Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.
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The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.
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The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development.
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Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.
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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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When success turns a man's head he faces failure
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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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Systems, scientific or philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.
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Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.
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