Quote

The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operations of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish. It is in a way the most civilised of all the cardinals, and its use is only forced on us by the needs of cultivated modes of thought.

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
Use
Operations
Thought
Zero
Need
Forced
Needs
Fish
Way
Fishes
Civilised
Life
Daily
Cardinals
Goes
Modes
Point
Cultivated

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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The motive of success is not enough.
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In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world
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Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.
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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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Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.
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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.
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Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning.
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Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
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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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In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections.
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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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Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience.
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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.
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By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.
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One and one make two assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstance are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change.
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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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Learning preserves the errors of the past as well as its wisdom.
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The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.
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As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
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A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.
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