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Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ... The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past.

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
Fact
Science
Adventures
Facts
Achievements
Past
Decay
Without
Achievement
Great
Adventure
Civilization
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More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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It is natural to think that an abstract science cannot be of much importance in affairs of human life, because it has omitted from its consideration everything of real interest.
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In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.
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The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.
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I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.
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There is no nature in an instant.
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Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.
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How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
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Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.
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Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.
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What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.
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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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The main importance of Francis Bacon's influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.
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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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On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.
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Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.
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The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.
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The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.
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Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning.
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Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about any things or about some things, without specifications of definite particular things.
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Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.
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