Quote

Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.

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
Doe
Sufficient
Novelty
Much
Chaos
Repetition
Something
Mathematics
Entering
Always
Mere
Background
System
Required
Upon
Backgrounds
Degenerate
Science
Complexes
Degenerates
Order
Complex
Reflected

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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I consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race... It would be impossible to imagine anything more un - Christianlike than theology.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Philosophy is the product of wonder.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
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A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.
Alfred North Whitehead
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There is no nature in an instant.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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
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Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Alfred North Whitehead