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The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.

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
Advance
Ground
Ultimate
Creative
Metaphysical
Novelty

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Systems, scientific or philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.
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To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical.
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
Alfred North Whitehead
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It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
Alfred North Whitehead
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A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
Alfred North Whitehead
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I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Peace is self-control at its widest-at the width where the self has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality.
Alfred North Whitehead
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[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.
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Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.
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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Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Great people plant trees they'll never sit under.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.
Alfred North Whitehead