Quote

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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Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Turns
Excellence
Reserved
Song
Entirely
Congratulations
Nature
Credit
Scent
Truth
Rose
Lyrics
Congratulation
Human
Sun
Address
Odes
Humans
Poet
Mistaken
Nightingale
Self
Gets
Addresses
Nightingales
Mind
Turn
Poets
Radiance

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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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.
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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From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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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The great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The vastest knowledge of today cannot transcend the buddhi of the Rishis in ancient India and science in its most advanced stage now is closer to Vedanta than ever before.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.
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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Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.
Alfred North Whitehead
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How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Learning preserves the errors of the past as well as its wisdom.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
Alfred North Whitehead
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An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has conceived.
Alfred North Whitehead
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After you understand about the sun and the stars and the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset.
Alfred North Whitehead