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Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise

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
Conditions
Pleasurable
Vigorous
Condition
Requires
Mental
Activity
Exercise
Genius
Inventive

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling.
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Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.
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From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.
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I regret that it has been necessary for me in this lecture to administer a large dose of four-dimensional geometry. I do not apologize, because I am really not responsible for the fact that nature in its most fundamental aspect is four-dimensional. Things are what they are.
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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.
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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.
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...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.
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The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. Life refuses to be embalmed alive. The more prolonged the halt in some unrelieved system of order, the greater the crash of the dead society.
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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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Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.
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True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
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The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.
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People make the mistake of talking about 'natural laws.' There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature.
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The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
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The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
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I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.
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The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.
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Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God.
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The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations.
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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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