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The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.
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
Intellectual
Discontent
Duty
Founded
Beauty
Factor
Upon
Distinction
Sense
Factors
Human
Appreciation
Gradual
Humans
Noble
Emergence
Life
Criticism
Provocative
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.
Alfred North Whitehead
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead
An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.
Alfred North Whitehead
The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.
Alfred North Whitehead
Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.
Alfred North Whitehead
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead
The purpose of education is not to fill a vessel but to kindle a flame.
Alfred North Whitehead
There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.
Alfred North Whitehead
The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.
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
Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.''
Alfred North Whitehead
Problems are only opportunities in disquise.
Alfred North Whitehead
There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.
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
No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.
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
Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.
Alfred North Whitehead
Education which is not modern share the fate of all organic things which are kept too long.
Alfred North Whitehead
