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The foundations of the world are to be found, not in the cognitive experience of conscious thought, but in the aesthetic experience of everyday life.

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
Experience
Found
Foundations
Thought
Cognitive
Life
Aesthetic
World
Everyday
Foundation
Conscious
Beauty

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts... Seek simplicity and distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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
Alfred North Whitehead
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An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.
Alfred North Whitehead
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A Unitarian is a person who believes in at most one God.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas' - that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Each human being is a more complex structure than any social system to which he belongs.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise
Alfred North Whitehead
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To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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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You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.
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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It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.
Alfred North Whitehead
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From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
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From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.
Alfred North Whitehead