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No scientist has yet provided an acceptable definition of "mind" or "mental" that reveals the character of "unconscious mental processes," and no physicist a lucid definition of "elementary particles" that shows how they can appear or disappear, and why there are so many.

— Lancelot Law Whyte Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

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More quotes by Lancelot Law Whyte

We are indeed a blind race, and the next generation, blind to its own blindness, will be amazed at ours.

Accent on Form: An Anticipation of the Science of Tomorrow (1955)

When a view attains wide popularity and seems obviously beyond question, its decline has usually begun or will begin very soon.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

Nothing is more surprising than the surprises of history, and nothing more untrustworthy than the uncritical extrapolation of the tendencies of the recent past.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

Theory confronts experiment, and both sides are a mixture of obscurity and clarity.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

No one is so brilliant that he can afford to neglect what history can teach him.

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

Friedrich Schiller On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lancelot Law Whyte (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.