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Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.

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
Revolution
Schemes
Fashioning
Intellectual
Alas
Afresh
Humanity
Protest
Proceeded
Ideas
Psychology
Inert
Ever
Educational
Stirred
Human
Passionate
Bind
Humans
Greatness
Scheme
Every
Ignorance
Pathetic

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Every really new idea looks crazy at first.
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Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.
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Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.
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I regret that it has been necessary for me in this lecture to administer a large dose of four-dimensional geometry. I do not apologize, because I am really not responsible for the fact that nature in its most fundamental aspect is four-dimensional. Things are what they are.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is the past, and it is the future.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Dogmatism is the anti-Christ of learning.
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Knowledge keeps no better than fish.
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Seek simplicity but distrust it.
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
Alfred North Whitehead
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An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Great dreamers' dreams are never fulfilled, they are always transcended.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.
Alfred North Whitehead
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I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.
Alfred North Whitehead