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Seek simplicity, then distrust.

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
Distrust
Simplicity
Seek

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.
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How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
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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.
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A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.
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The progress of Science consists in observing interconnections and in showing with a patient ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of a few general relations, called laws. To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
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Error is the price we pay for progress.
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The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is the past, and it is the future.
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No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover.
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Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.
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Everyone is a philosopher. Not everyone is good at it.
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There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations
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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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We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
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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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Mathematics, in its widest significance, is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning.
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So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.
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Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.
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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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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
Alfred North Whitehead