Quote

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

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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
Mind
Way
Keeping
Ought
Open
Anything
Wells
Well

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.
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Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.
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The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
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Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.
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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.
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Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
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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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Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.
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Great people plant trees they'll never sit under.
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The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.
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The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.
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I am sure that one secret of a successful teacher is that he has formulated quite clearly in his mind what the pupil has got to know in precise fashion. He will then cease from half-hearted attempts to worry his pupils with memorizing a lot of irrelevant stuff of inferior importance.
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Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
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Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.
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Art heightens the sense of humanity. It gives an elation to feeling which is supernatural...A million sunsets will not spur us on towards civilization. It requires Art to evoke into consciousness the finite perfections which lie ready for human achievement.
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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.
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A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.
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Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment.
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Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open.
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Learning preserves the errors of the past as well as its wisdom.
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