It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
More Quotes from Alfred North Whitehead:
By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and, in effect, increases the mental power of the race.Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
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 greatest science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
Alfred North Whitehead
So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.
Alfred North Whitehead
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
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