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The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
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
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Past
Equip
Present
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More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
Seek simplicity but distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead
When success turns a man's head he faces failure
Alfred North Whitehead
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
Alfred North Whitehead
I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.
Alfred North Whitehead
Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.
Alfred North Whitehead
Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.
Alfred North Whitehead
There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.
Alfred North Whitehead
The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.
Alfred North Whitehead
The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.
Alfred North Whitehead
Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.
Alfred North Whitehead
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead
The vastest knowledge of today cannot transcend the buddhi of the Rishis in ancient India and science in its most advanced stage now is closer to Vedanta than ever before.
Alfred North Whitehead
