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Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.

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
Mathematics
Motivation
Progress
Ideas
Reinterpretation
Mathematical
Fundamental
Fundamentals
Basic

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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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.
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Problems are only opportunities in disquise.
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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.
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We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.
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It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment.
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Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose.
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War can protect it cannot create.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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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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.
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Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.
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Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.
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There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.
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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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Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
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The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts... Seek simplicity and distrust it.
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The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
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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.
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What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.
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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
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The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.
Alfred North Whitehead