The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.
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Aphorisms by Alfred North Whitehead
It is the first step in sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur: like unto an arrow in the hand of a child. The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Wisdom)
Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.
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There is a greatness in the lives of those who build up religious systems, a greatness in action, in idea and in self-subordination, embodied in instance after instance through centuries of growth. There is a greatness in the rebels who destroy such systems: they are the Titans who storm heaven, armed with passionate sincerity. It may be that the revolt is the mere assertion by youth of its right to its proper brilliance, to that final good of immediate joy. Philosophy may not neglect the multifariousness of the world: the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross.
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It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Life)
We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Wisdom)
We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Wisdom)
Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.
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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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Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments. But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.
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