Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

War can protect it cannot create.

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In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.

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On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics The exactness is a fake.

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Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

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Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language. It is essentially a written language, and it endeavors to exemplify in its written structures the patterns which it is its purpose to convey. The pattern of the marks on paper is a particular instance of the pattern to be conveyed to thought. The algebraic method is our best approach to the expression of necessity, by reason of its reduction of accident to the ghostlike character of the real variable.

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Ideas won't keep something must be done about them.

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To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor of a more concrete element of nature.

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Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

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Every philosophy is tinged with the colouring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.

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The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.

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The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally new development.

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A general definition of civilization a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.

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Seek simplicity but distrust it.

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It requires a very unusual mind to make an analysis of the obvious.

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Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.

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The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

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Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.

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The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.

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It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent. It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many. It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently. It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World. It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God. It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God.

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The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

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If a dog jumps into 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.

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It is the essence of life that it exists for its own sake.

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The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

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In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

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The essence of Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of God's agency in the world. The record is fragmentary, inconsistent, and uncertain.... But there can be no doubt as to what elements in the record have evoked a response from all that is best in human nature. The Mother, the Child, and the bare manger the lowly man, homeless and self-forgetful, with his message of peace, love, and sympathy the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair and the whole with the authority of supreme victory.

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