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There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.

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
Progress
Attitude
Greater
Party
Spirit
Thought
Partisanship
Hindrance
Irritated

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort.
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Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.
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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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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.
Alfred North Whitehead
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No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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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Seek simplicity, then distrust.
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Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
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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It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.
Alfred North Whitehead
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If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced, and almost any idea which jogs you out of your current abstractions may be better than nothing.
Alfred North Whitehead
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An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.
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Philosophy is the product of wonder.
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Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.
Alfred North Whitehead