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

More quotes by 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.
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By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.
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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 order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.
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It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.
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Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.
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We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
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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.
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We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.
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Every really new idea looks crazy at first.
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It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.
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Religion is what a man does with his solitariness.
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I always feel that I have two duties to perform with a parting guest: one, to see that he doesn't forget anything that is his the other, to see that he doesn't take anything that is mine.
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The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.
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The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.
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So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.
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You may not divide the seamless coat of learning.
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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 world is shocked, or amused, by the sight of saintly old people hindering in the name of morality the removal of obvious brutalities from a legal system.
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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