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Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.
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
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Fail
Proposition
Important
Importance
Adds
World
Failing
Distinguish
Interest
Propositions
Interesting
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Judgement
Truth
Add
Philosopher
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More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.
Alfred North Whitehead
But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided.
Alfred North Whitehead
Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.
Alfred North Whitehead
Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
Alfred North Whitehead
We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.
Alfred North Whitehead
The term many presupposes the term one , and the term one presupposes the term many.
Alfred North Whitehead
The progress of Science consists in observing interconnections and in showing with a patient ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of a few general relations, called laws. 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
The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.
Alfred North Whitehead
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.
Alfred North Whitehead
Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is the past, and it is the future.
Alfred North Whitehead
There is no nature in an instant.
Alfred North Whitehead
There is a technique, a knack, for thinking, just as there is for doing other things. You are not wholly at the mercy of your thoughts, any more than they are you. They are a machine you can learn to operate.
Alfred North Whitehead
From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
