A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.
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Citations by Alfred North Whitehead
The main importance of Francis Bacon's influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.
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Error is the price we pay for progress.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Wisdom)
The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.
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The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Art)
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment in recognition of the pattern.
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We do not require elaborate training merely in order to refrain from embarking upon intricate trains of inference. Such abstinence is only too easy.
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The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in' irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.
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Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Wisdom)
That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.
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