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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
Call
Combinations
Ideas
Tested
Without
Received
Must
Fresh
Mind
Thrown
Things
Combination
Aware
Utilized
Merely
Inert
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
Learning preserves the errors of the past as well as its wisdom.
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
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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Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
The only justification in the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary to be used.
Alfred North Whitehead
The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.
Alfred North Whitehead
The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.
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
But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing.
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The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.
Alfred North Whitehead
Knowledge keeps no better than fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.
Alfred North Whitehead
The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.
Alfred North Whitehead
From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.
Alfred North Whitehead
Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.
Alfred North Whitehead
Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.
Alfred North Whitehead
