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There is a technique, a knack, for thinking, just as there is for doing other things. You are not wholly at the mercy of your thoughts, any more than they are you. They are a machine you can learn to operate.
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
Technique
Mercy
Machines
Thoughts
Learning
Knack
Learn
Operate
Things
Wholly
Thinking
Machine
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being.
Alfred North Whitehead
The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.
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A man of science doesn't discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover.
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Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.
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Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.
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Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.
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It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
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Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
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I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That's not me.
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One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.
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The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.
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Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.
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Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.
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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.
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It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.
Alfred North Whitehead
Speak out in acts the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
Alfred North Whitehead
There is no nature at an instant.
Alfred North Whitehead
An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.
Alfred North Whitehead
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
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