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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
Thought
Self
Tangle
Every
Belongs
Final
Finals
Pursue
Intellect
Respect
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.
Alfred North Whitehead
I regret that it has been necessary for me in this lecture to administer a large dose of four-dimensional geometry. I do not apologize, because I am really not responsible for the fact that nature in its most fundamental aspect is four-dimensional. Things are what they are.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.
Alfred North Whitehead
Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.
Alfred North Whitehead
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Great people plant trees they'll never sit under.
Alfred North Whitehead
Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.
Alfred North Whitehead
To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor of a more concrete element of nature.
Alfred North Whitehead
The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.
Alfred North Whitehead
But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided.
Alfred North Whitehead
How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
Alfred North Whitehead
Problems are only opportunities in disquise.
Alfred North Whitehead
I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.
Alfred North Whitehead
From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.
Alfred North Whitehead
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
Alfred North Whitehead
