Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead OM FRSwas an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth15 February 1861
success education opportunity
A clash of doctrine is not a disaster, it is an opportunity.
strong adventure successful
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.
successful sea world
For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.
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We must produce a great age, or see the collapse of the upward striving of our race.
success enough motive
The motive of success is not enough.
brutal courage firm force rather resolve true virtue vulgar
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes. Rather the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
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Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.
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Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
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Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
may coats seamless
You may not divide the seamless coat of learning,
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Many a scientist has patiently designed experiments for the purpose of substantiating his belief that animal operations are motivated by no purposes. He has perhaps spent his spare time in writing articles to prove that human beings are as other animals so that 'purpose' is a category irrelevant for the explanation of their bodily activities, his own activities included. Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.
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Philosophy is the product of wonder. The effort after the general characterization of the world around us is the romance of human thought.
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It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present society .
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Democracy...is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only a half dozen unbelievers in America, their well-being would be a test of our democracy.