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Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.

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
Ends
Reaches
Without
Decay
Never
Reached
Rarely
China
Adventure
Civilization
Predetermined
Full
Columbus

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.
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In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world
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Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.
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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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Error itself may be happy chance.
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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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A clash of doctrine is not a disaster, it is an opportunity.
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...the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.
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So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.
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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 result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumed with any spark of vitality.
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I am sure that one secret of a successful teacher is that he has formulated quite clearly in his mind what the pupil has got to know in precise fashion. He will then cease from half-hearted attempts to worry his pupils with memorizing a lot of irrelevant stuff of inferior importance.
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A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.
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You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.
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There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.
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The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.
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Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.
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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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