Quote

A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

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
Full
Vigor
Race
Decay
Action
Contrast
Past
Preserves
May
Safety
Without
Adventure
Real
Civilization
Nerved
Long
Beyond
Harbors

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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Seek simplicity but distrust it.
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The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.
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The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
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The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.
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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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[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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In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.
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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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An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion.
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The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead
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No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.
Alfred North Whitehead
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If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced, and almost any idea which jogs you out of your current abstractions may be better than nothing.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operations of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish. It is in a way the most civilised of all the cardinals, and its use is only forced on us by the needs of cultivated modes of thought.
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From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead