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The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.

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
Learned
Truth
People
Antecedent
Adjustment
Statements
Tradition
Concerned

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.
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There is no nature at an instant.
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Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.
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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.
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Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.
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No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes.
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Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.
Alfred North Whitehead
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If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced, and almost any idea which jogs you out of your current abstractions may be better than nothing.
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The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.
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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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It is the business of the future to be dangerous and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.
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No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.
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The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.
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The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.
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Philosophy is the product of wonder. The effort after the general characterization of the world around us is the romance of human thought.
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The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.
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I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race.
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The motive of success is not enough.
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Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose.
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No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.
Alfred North Whitehead