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Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.

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
Importance
Ordinary
Language
Reverses
Algebra
Reverse
Relative
Factors
Math

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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Mathematics, in its widest significance, is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning.
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The progress of Science consists in observing interconnections and in showing with a patient ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of a few general relations, called laws. 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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Great dreamers' dreams are never fulfilled, they are always transcended.
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Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.
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The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad... Truth matters because of beauty.
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No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.
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The term many presupposes the term one , and the term one presupposes the term many.
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There is no nature in an instant.
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I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.
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The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.
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Error itself may be happy chance.
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No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
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As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
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It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.
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It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
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In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.
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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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The vastest knowledge of today cannot transcend the buddhi of the Rishis in ancient India and science in its most advanced stage now is closer to Vedanta than ever before.
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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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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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