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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
Whole
Truths
Lying
Half
Truth

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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There is a technique, a knack, for thinking, just as there is for doing other things. You are not wholly at the mercy of your thoughts, any more than they are you. They are a machine you can learn to operate.
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What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.
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Error itself may be happy chance.
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Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.
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Governments are best classified by considering who are the 'somebodies' they are in fact endeavouring to satisfy.
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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
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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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The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.
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If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
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The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.
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But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing.
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The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus .
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Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.
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Seek simplicity but distrust it.
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The great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.
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There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.
Alfred North Whitehead
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No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.
Alfred North Whitehead