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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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Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.
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There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.
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An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.
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Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.
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Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.
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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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The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.
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The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.
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Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise
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You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.
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I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.
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Knowledge keeps no better than fish.
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Speak out in acts the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
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I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.
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Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
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There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.
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The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
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Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.
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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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We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
Alfred North Whitehead