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The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is the past, and it is the future.
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
Ground
Holy
Present
Wisdom
Knowledge
Future
Use
Equip
Past
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More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
Routine is the god of every social system it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.
Alfred North Whitehead
There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.
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
The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.
Alfred North Whitehead
A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content.
Alfred North Whitehead
The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.
Alfred North Whitehead
What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.
Alfred North Whitehead
You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.
Alfred North Whitehead
In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections.
Alfred North Whitehead
I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.
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
Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment.
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
Common sense is genius in homespun.
Alfred North Whitehead
Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
Alfred North Whitehead
Peace is self-control at its widest-at the width where the self has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality.
Alfred North Whitehead
Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.
Alfred North Whitehead
A clash of doctrine is not a disaster, it is an opportunity.
Alfred North Whitehead
The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.
Alfred North Whitehead
