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To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
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
Particular
Reasoning
Thought
Uncertainty
Certainty
Aim
Permanent
Scientific
Logic
Ontology
General
Transitory
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.
Alfred North Whitehead
Seek simplicity but distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead
In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows, for details are swallowed up in principles. The details for knowledge which are important, will be picked up ad hoc in each avocation of life, but the habit of the active utilization of well-understood principles is the final possession of WISDOM.
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
One and one make two assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstance are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change.
Alfred North Whitehead
The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.
Alfred North Whitehead
Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.
Alfred North Whitehead
The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.
Alfred North Whitehead
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Seek simplicity, then distrust.
Alfred North Whitehead
Education which is not modern share the fate of all organic things which are kept too long.
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
Value is coextensive with reality.
Alfred North Whitehead
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead
I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.
Alfred North Whitehead
The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.
Alfred North Whitehead
Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
Alfred North Whitehead
Every really new idea looks crazy at first.
Alfred North Whitehead
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
Alfred North Whitehead
