"We think of the number "five" as applying……" — Alfred North Whitehead

"We think of the number "five" as applying to appropriate groups of any entities whatsoever - to five fishes, five children, five apples, five days... We are merely thinking of those relationships between those two groups which are entirely independent of the individual essences of any of the members of either group. This is a very remarkable feat of abstraction; and it must have taken ages for the human race to rise to it"

— Alfred North Whitehead

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267 Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead has 267 quotes on this site. A few more worth reading:

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More Abstraction Quotes

This quote is filed under Abstraction Quotes, one of 249 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:

Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature. — Josef Albers
That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions. — Sarah Caldwell
Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured. — Paul Cezanne
So the universe is constantly moving in the direction of higher evolutionary impulses, creativity, abstraction, and meaning. — Deepak Chopra
Love is not some complex, mystical abstraction. It is something accessible and human that we learn through our everyday experience,… — Leo Buscaglia
The spiritual life is not a special career, involving abstraction from the world of things. It is a part of… — Evelyn Underhill
The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor… — Emma Goldman
The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty. — Piet Mondrian
Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction. — Paul Gauguin
The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint. — Georgia O'Keeffe
Of the many forms of false culture, a premature converse with abstractions is perhaps the most likely to prove fatal… — George Boole
It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one among a… — Alexander Hamilton

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