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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.

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
Practice
Transition
Age
Complexes
Change
Complex
Wells
Dumb
Oncoming
Well
Patterns
Habitual
Every
Passing
Marked
Habit
Pattern
Emotion
Passings

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The fixed person for the fixed duties who in older societies was such a godsend, in future will be a public danger.
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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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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.
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We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.
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The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus .
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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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When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.
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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 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development.
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The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.
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Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.
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Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.
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The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''
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Philosophy asks the simple question: What is it all about?
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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.
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Error itself may be happy chance.
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Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operations of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish. It is in a way the most civilised of all the cardinals, and its use is only forced on us by the needs of cultivated modes of thought.
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Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.
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Life is the enjoyment of emotion, derived from the past and aimed at the future.
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