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The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.

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
Chief
Chiefs
Evidence
Danger
Philosophy
Narrowness
Selection

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
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As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
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A Unitarian is a person who believes in at most one God.
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Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.
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I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race.
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In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.
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Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.
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If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced, and almost any idea which jogs you out of your current abstractions may be better than nothing.
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Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas' - that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.
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Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
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The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.
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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.
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Education which is not modern share the fate of all organic things which are kept too long.
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Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.
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The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development.
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Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.
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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
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The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.
Alfred North Whitehead