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It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment.

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
Intellect
Respect
Thought
Self
Tangle
Every
Belongs
Final
Finals
Pursue

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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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.
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Seek simplicity but distrust it.
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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.
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Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
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The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.
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Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.
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Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.
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The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.
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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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Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.
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How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
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Our rate of progress is such that an individual human being, of ordinary length of life, will be called on to face novel situations which find no parallel in his past. The fixed person, for the fixed duties, who, in older societies was such a godsend, in the future will be a public danger.
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The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.
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Peace is self-control at its widest-at the width where the self has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality.
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In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.
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It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead
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We must produce a great age, or see the collapse of the upward striving of our race.
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The main importance of Francis Bacon's influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.
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In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Whenever a text-book is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. It it were easy, the book ought to be burned.
Alfred North Whitehead