A Quote by Alfred North Whitehead

What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.

Alfred North Whitehead

Quote Topics

Another Derived Hand Ideas Illustrating Information Learned Mediocrity Offer Scrap Second Second-Hand Secret Tends The Secret Of World

Quote Author

Alfred North Whitehead
English - Mathematician
February 15, 1861 - December 30, 1947

More and more we're negating the validity of first-hand experience of people from other countries and other cultures... whether it's on TV, the Internet, mobile phones or whatever - the world system we live in so values second-hand information.

Nitin Sawhney

Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see—and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!

Eugene O'Neill

When we moved to England in 1986, I was ten years old and I didn't know anything about punk or hip hop. The only words I knew in English were 'dance' and 'Michael Jackson.' We got put in a flat in Mitchum, and the council gave us second hand furniture, second hand clothes and a second hand radio that I took to bed with me every night.

M.I.A.

Liebig taught the world two great lessons. The first was that in order to teach chemistry it was necessary that students should be taken into a laboratory. The second lesson was that he who is to apply scientific thought and method to industrial problems must have a thorough knowledge of the sciences. The world learned the first lesson more readily than it learned the second.

Ira Remsen

The information I have about Iran is second hand.

Marjane Satrapi

If you ever need a helping hand, it is at the end of your arm. As you get older you must remember you have a second hand. The first one is to help yourself. The second hand is to help others.

Audrey Hepburn

Perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.

Charles Dickens

My sister and I are both diagnosed with second-hand smoke syndromes. We have never smoked, but we grew up with second-hand smoke our entire lives.

Loni Anderson

If second hand smoke is killing that many people and nicotine is so addictive then why is no one addicted to second hand smoke?

Doug Stanhope

The soul that has learned the blessed secret of seeing God's hand in all that concerns it, cannot be a prey to fear, it looks beyond all second causes, straight into the heart and will of God, and rests content, because He rules.

Susannah Spurgeon

Your second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasures he dispenses.

Leigh Hunt

I was the second-best player in high school. I was the second pick in the draft. I've been second in the MVP voting three times. I came in second in the Finals. I'm tired of being second. I'm not going to settle for that. I'm done with it.

Kevin Durant

With a little persuasion, any familiar thing can turn abnormal in the mind. Here's a thought experiment. Consider this brutal bit of magic. A human grows a second human in a space inside her belly; she grows a second heart and a second brain, second eyes and second limbs, a complete set of second body parts as if for use as spares, and then, after almost a year, she expels that second screaming being out of her belly and into the world, alive. Bizarre, isn't it?

Karen Thompson Walker

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

Mark Twain

I wear a lot of second hand clothes unless I have a concert and then I wear beaded and sequined second hand clothes. No stylist dresses me although I do have a woman that assists me with the buttons.