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The whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning.

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
Math
Mathematics
Series
Organization
Imagination
Process
Reasoning
Whole
Consists
Aids

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.
Alfred North Whitehead
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In all education the main cause of failure is staleness.
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We must produce a great age, or see the collapse of the upward striving of our race.
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The world is shocked, or amused, by the sight of saintly old people hindering in the name of morality the removal of obvious brutalities from a legal system.
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Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
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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
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The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.
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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One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.
Alfred North Whitehead
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It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.
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Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Seek simplicity but distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Speak out in acts the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Everyone is a philosopher. Not everyone is good at it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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In every age of well-marked transition, there is the pattern of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing and there is oncoming a new complex of habit.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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