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• The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
  -- A.N. Whitehead...
• Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking.
  -- Alfred North Whitehead...
• 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 about what we are doing.
  The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them....
• Without adventure, civilization is in full decay. -- Alfred North Whitehead
• Seek simplicity -- and distrust it. -- Alfred North Whitehead
• The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.
  Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications....
• Education with inert ideas is not only useless; it is above all things harmful.
  -- Alfred North Whitehead...
• The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.
  -- Alfred North Whitehead...