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.
More Quotes from 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 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
The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.
Alfred North Whitehead
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
Alfred North Whitehead
Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.
Alfred North Whitehead
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is thepast, and it is the future.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Based on Topics: Education Quotes, Emotions Quotes, Facts QuotesBased on Keywords: cloaking, deductions, hard-headed, insistence, perplexities, premises, reasonings, straws, superstition
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