Quote

Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.

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
Looks
Shall
Criteria
Work
Creative
Originality
Like
Common
Judgement
Words
Sole
Sense
Master
Thought
Masters
Ideas
Creativity
Criterion
Look
Ones
Suppressing

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
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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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But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a 'nexus' and of a 'proposition'. The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat. Process and Reality
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Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience.
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The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.
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With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.
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In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.
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Knowledge keeps no better than fish.
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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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A Unitarian is a person who believes in at most one God.
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Spoken language is merely a series of squeaks.
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We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.
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Great people plant trees they'll never sit under.
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Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. Thus religion is solitariness and if you are never solitary, you are never religious.
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Problems are only opportunities in disquise.
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There is no nature at an instant.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.
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By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.
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Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas' - that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.
Alfred North Whitehead
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I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.
Alfred North Whitehead