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

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.
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The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.
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Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling.
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Error is the price we pay for progress.
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The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.
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Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas' - that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
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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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In every age of well-marked transition, there is the pattern of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing and there is oncoming a new complex of habit.
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Art heightens the sense of humanity. It gives an elation to feeling which is supernatural...A million sunsets will not spur us on towards civilization. It requires Art to evoke into consciousness the finite perfections which lie ready for human achievement.
Alfred North Whitehead
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We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.
Alfred North Whitehead
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I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race.
Alfred North Whitehead
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No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The many become one and are increased by one.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.
Alfred North Whitehead