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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.

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

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.
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The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.
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Problems are only opportunities in disquise.
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There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.
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Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
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Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.
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Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography.
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Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.
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Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.
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It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
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Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling.
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The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.
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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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Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about any things or about some things, without specifications of definite particular things.
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Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
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There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations
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But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a 'nexus' and of a 'proposition'. The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat. Process and Reality
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The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.
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There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.
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The main importance of Francis Bacon's influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.
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