Quote

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

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
Way
Poor
Civilized
Would
Upon
Bodies
Life
Lives
Intellect
Experience
Merely
Bodily
Body
Clothes
Register
Wells
Percent
Governed
Without
Emotion
Ninety
Well
Brain
Brains

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.
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Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
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The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''
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The purpose of education is not to fill a vessel but to kindle a flame.
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Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.
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Problems are only opportunities in disquise.
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Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
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Speak out in acts the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
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The motive of success is not enough.
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Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
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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.
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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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It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.
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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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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.
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Governments are best classified by considering who are the 'somebodies' they are in fact endeavouring to satisfy.
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No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes.
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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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The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.
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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.
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