Quote

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.

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
Power
Curiosity
Merits
Ideas
Adventure
Imperfections
Mean
Elements
Imperfection
Always
Civilization
Recognizing
Living
Transformed
Means
Civilized
Sensitiveness
Order
Element
Unrest
Change
Merit
Survives

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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The motive of success is not enough.
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Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open.
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After you understand about the sun and the stars and the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset.
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Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning.
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You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.
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The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts... Seek simplicity and distrust it.
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Human nature loses its most precious quality when it is robbed of its sense of things beyond, unexplored and yet insistent.
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Religion is what a man does with his solitariness.
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To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.
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All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
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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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Great people plant trees they'll never sit under.
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The fixed person for the fixed duties who in older societies was such a godsend, in future will be a public danger.
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Systems, scientific or philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.
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There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations
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It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately destroy the instincts but until this has occurred, words do not count.
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On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.
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Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications.
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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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There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.
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