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What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.

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
Ideas
Offers
World
Second
Learned
Illustrating
Information
Scrap
Hand
Derived
Secret
Mediocrity
Another
Tends
Hands
Offer

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.
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Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.
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Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.
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The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.
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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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Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
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God is in the world, or nowhere, creating continually in us and around us. Insofar as man partakes of this creative process does he partake of the divine, of God, and that participation is his immortality.
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It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
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Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.
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In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.
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All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
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The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.
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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 teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad... Truth matters because of beauty.
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It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.
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The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.
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The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.
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Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.
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Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
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But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided.
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