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There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.

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
Truths
Lying
Half
Truth
Whole

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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After you understand about the sun and the stars and the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.
Alfred North Whitehead
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When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.
Alfred North Whitehead
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With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.
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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Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.
Alfred North Whitehead
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You may not divide the seamless coat of learning.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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
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Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.
Alfred North Whitehead