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Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.

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
Objectives
Certain
Harbour
Civilised
Extravagance
Vigorous
Societies

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Seek simplicity but distrust it.
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Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
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People make the mistake of talking about 'natural laws.' There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature.
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Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.
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Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
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The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
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Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.
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The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad... Truth matters because of beauty.
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The foundations of the world are to be found, not in the cognitive experience of conscious thought, but in the aesthetic experience of everyday life.
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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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It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.
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Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose.
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The motive of success is not enough.
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The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
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Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
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The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.
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In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections.
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Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.
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Democracy...is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only a half dozen unbelievers in America, their well-being would be a test of our democracy.
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The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.
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