“It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Preface (p. 4)
1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)
501.13 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s05/p0000.html#501.10 <br class="br">1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards
“It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Preface (p. 4)
1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)
Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice
Writing for the court in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947) about the consequences of the First Amendments Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause for the separation of church and state.
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 12
Context: Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of 'Hello! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.
“Mother, any distance greater than a single span
requires a second pair of hands.”
Simon Armitage (1963) Poet, playwright, novelist
'*', from Book Of Matches.
“Power is required for communication.”
Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist
Source: Power and Innocence (1972), Ch. 12 : Toward New Community
Context: Power is required for communication. To stand before an indifferent or hostile group and have one's say, or to speak honestly to a friend truths that go deep and hurt — these require self-affirmation, self-assertion, and even at times aggression. … My experience in psychotherapy convinces me that the act which requires the most courage is the simple communication, unpropelled by rage or anger, of one's deepest thoughts to another.
“Every instrument requires to be made by experience.”
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Stephen Jay Gould book Wonderful Life
Source: Wonderful Life (1989), p. 51
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
As quoted in Williams' Weighing the Odds: A Course in Probability and Statistics (2001), p. 498
Attributed from posthumous publications
Robert Floyd (1936–2001) American computer scientist
The Paradigms of Programming (1979)