A clash of doctrines is not a disaster--it is an opportunity.
Alfred North Whitehead
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning , or destroyed it altogether.
Alfred North Whitehead
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If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
Alfred North Whitehead
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It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead
Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The art of progress is to preserve order amid change.
Alfred North Whitehead
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
Alfred North Whitehead
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The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial... he cannot go along with currents and trends.
Alfred North Whitehead
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
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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 the devil.
Alfred North Whitehead
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
Alfred North Whitehead
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
Alfred North Whitehead, Dialogues (1954)
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The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.
Alfred North Whitehead, From the viewbook of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
Alfred North Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics (1911)
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim
Wisdom the source of virtue, and of fame,
Obtained with labor, for mankind employed,
And then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
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.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
Results from Rand Lindsly's Quotations:
Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
Through and through the world is infested with quantity. To talk sense is to talk quantities, It is no use saying the nation is large- how large? It is no use s aying that radium is scarce- how scarce? You can not evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. . . But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a little mad.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
Results from Poor Man's College:
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 (1861 - 1947)
An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside; and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947)
Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861 - 1947), N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.