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Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

Mathematician

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Famous Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

“Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.”

HumansHas BeensIdeasHumanityPsychologyGreatnessIgnoranceRevolutionIntellectualPassionateEducationalProtestSchemesAlasPathetic
Book:Aims of Education
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“The vitality of thought is in adventure. Idea's won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervour, live for it, and, if need be, die for it. Their inheritors receive the idea, perhaps now strong and successful, but without inheriting the fervour; so the idea settles down to a comfortable middle age, turns senile, and dies.”

IfsNeedsIdeasDoneAgeScienceDiesTurnsStrongSuccessfulMiddleAdventureComfortableSettlingVitalityMiddle AgesSettling DownCustodiansSenile
Book:Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead
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“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. That would be claiming too much. 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.”

LittlesIdeasPlayWould BeSuccessStudyToo MuchCuttingEssentialsMathematicsMadHistoricalProfoundMathMathematicalCharmingConstructsSimileOpheliaOmitting
Book:Science and the Modern World
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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.”

HumansIdeasHardFactsFeelingsRememberStudyIssuesCostFunctionMathematicsMathClarityMathematicalReasoningSuperstitionsSheerSentimentalFloatsMistPremisesStrawsInsistenceDeductionsHuman IntelligencePerplexity
Book:Adventures of Ideas
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“The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternatives, the better and the worse. Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilization there is always an element of unrest.”

MenMeanIdeasOrderIndividualForceSocialAdventureCivilizationElementsCuriosityAlternativesMeritImperfectionTransformedInherentPersuasionRecognizingCivilisationMaintenanceLiabilitySocial OrderDisclosureUnrestRecourseRemnantsCivilised
Author:Alfred North Whitehead
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