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No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes.

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
Science
Tacitly
Presupposes
Metaphysics
Unconscious
Secure

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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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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Spoken language is merely a series of squeaks.
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The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
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Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.
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What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.
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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
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It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment.
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The progress of Science consists in observing interconnections and in showing with a patient ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of a few general relations, called laws. To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
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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 is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.
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It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.
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So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.
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Seek simplicity but distrust it.
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The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.
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Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.
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The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.
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Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
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Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.
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The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.
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A great society is a society in which its men of business think greatly of their functions.
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