A Quote by Alfred North Whitehead

Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions. — © Alfred North Whitehead
Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
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.
If children knew what the effects are of using single-use plastic straws for drinking sodas or whatever, they might reconsider and use paper straws or no straws at all.
The knowledge of Natural-History, being Observation of Matters of Fact, is more certain than most others, and in my slender Opinion, less subject to Mistakes than Reasonings, Hypotheses, and Deductions are; ... These are things we are sure of, so far as our Senses are not fallible; and which, in probability, have been ever since the Creation, and will remain to the End of the World, in the same Condition we now find them.
Plastic straws might be everything terrible about American consumerism, individually wrapped. But paper straws put the lie to the belief that we can consume our way out of the problems created by consumerism.
A tremendous stream is flowing toward the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss.
In law, as in every other branch of knowledge, the truths given by induction tend to form the premises for new deductions. The lawyers and the judges of successive generations do not repeat for themselves the process of verification any more than most of us repeat the demonstrations of the truths of astronomy or physics.
How many millions of straws do we use every day across Europe? I would have people not use plastic straws any more.
You know crazy straws - they go all over the place? These straws are sane. They never lost their mind. They say, "we're going straight to the mouth. That guy who takes a while to get there? He's crazy."
Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises.
When I run a business, and I run a business, if I don't take advantage of the five deductions that are available to me, even if you think those deductions are unfair, then I've violated my fiduciary duty.
...We then examine a particular coding system in DNA and discover that UI [universal information] is conveyed within the genes. Using this DNA evidence and scientific laws governing UI as premises, we are able to develop sound, logical deductions. This leads us to the following conclusion: the God of the Bible exists and He is responsible for originating and embedding Universal Information into biological life.
Making a paper straw requires growing a tree, cutting it down, and pulping and pressing it into a tube. Manufacturers then use fossil fuels to ship the straws to stores and cafes. Many paper straws on the market are not even compostable or recyclable, as promised.
How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly, is one of the great mysteries of human nature.
I'm thinking about anything and everything. I'm making stuff up in my head, I'm using sense memory. Sometimes when it doesn't come and you've got no choice because you're getting paid to do it, you grasp at straws. It's always easy now with my kids. I just create some "what-ifs" in my head, something horrible that would devastate me as a mother.
Obviously, in marketing, the best tool is to show the autobiography in fiction. It's inevitable how that happens, but it's generic. Say I've written a story where my sister dies. 'Well, did your sister die?' No, she did not. But people use those straws to grasp at the difference between reality and fiction.
I was elected to fight for the people of New Jersey, to win federal investment in our infrastructure, to strengthen our health care, to address gun violence, and get back our SALT deductions.
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