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Philosophy asks the simple question: What is it all about?

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
Simple
Question
Philosophy
Asks

More quotes by 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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Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Speak out in acts the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.
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Systems, scientific or philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.
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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Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about any things or about some things, without specifications of definite particular things.
Alfred North Whitehead
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I always feel that I have two duties to perform with a parting guest: one, to see that he doesn't forget anything that is his the other, to see that he doesn't take anything that is mine.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Routine is the god of every social system it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
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From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.
Alfred North Whitehead