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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.

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
Discovery
Abstractions
Weapons
Epiphany
Control
Utmost
Fact
Abstraction
Facts
Paradox
True
Concrete
Thought
Established
Fully

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Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being.
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Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.
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Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ... The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past.
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How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
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Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise
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What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.
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No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.
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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.
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Each human being is a more complex structure than any social system to which he belongs.
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If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
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In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.
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Education which is not modern share the fate of all organic things which are kept too long.
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It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment.
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To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.
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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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Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.
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Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.
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Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
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Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.
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