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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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Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Mind
Thrown
Things
Combination
Aware
Utilized
Merely
Inert
Call
Combinations
Ideas
Tested
Without
Received
Must
Fresh
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.
Alfred North Whitehead
A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.
Alfred North Whitehead
A man of science doesn't discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover.
Alfred North Whitehead
Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.
Alfred North Whitehead
The purpose of education is not to fill a vessel but to kindle a flame.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
Whenever a text-book is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. It it were easy, the book ought to be burned.
Alfred North Whitehead
Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise
Alfred North Whitehead
Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
Alfred North Whitehead
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead
When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.
Alfred North Whitehead
The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present society .
Alfred North Whitehead
The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.
Alfred North Whitehead
Common sense is genius in homespun.
Alfred North Whitehead
Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.
Alfred North Whitehead
The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.
Alfred North Whitehead
