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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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Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Experience
Aim
Around
Philosophical
Generalization
Back
Ultimate
Weave
Without
Whose
Flux
Must
Theory
Integral
Things
Philosophy
Sophistication
System
Final
Doubt
Finals

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover.
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In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.
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The term many presupposes the term one , and the term one presupposes the term many.
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Knowledge keeps no better than fish.
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Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.
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Youth is life as yet unblemished by much tragedy, but hardly by TV.
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It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment.
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Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.
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An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion.
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On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.
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Speak out in acts the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
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We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.
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Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants.
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The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development.
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Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise
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There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.
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Learning is often spoken of as if we are watching the open pages of all the books which we have ever read, and then, when occasion arises, we select the right page to read aloud to the universe.
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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
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I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.
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The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus .
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