Quote

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.

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
Particular
Observation
Aeroplanes
Land
Starts
Renewed
Science
Flight
Rendered
Makes
Rational
Lands
True
Discovery
Imaginative
Like
Method
Airplane
Aeroplane
Ground
Thin
Acute
Air
Interpretation
Generalization

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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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As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
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It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present society .
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When success turns a man's head he faces failure
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Great dreamers' dreams are never fulfilled, they are always transcended.
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There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations
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Seek simplicity, then distrust.
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The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.
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Learning is often spoken of as if we are watching the open pages of all the books which we have ever read, and then, when occasion arises, we select the right page to read aloud to the universe.
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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.
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The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir
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The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.
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But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided.
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The many become one and are increased by one.
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All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
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Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.
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A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.
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Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise
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Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.
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The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. Life refuses to be embalmed alive. The more prolonged the halt in some unrelieved system of order, the greater the crash of the dead society.
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