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Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.

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
Rightness
Limitation
Essential
Essentials
Growth
Reality

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present society .
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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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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
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I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race.
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Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.
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The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir
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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.
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In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.
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Great people plant trees they'll never sit under.
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Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
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Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
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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 takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.
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You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.
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Religion is what a person does in his solitariness.
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Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.
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Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
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Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.
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What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.
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The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.
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