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About this quote

What does it mean?
Growth needs limits; unlimited creativity without actual basis produces nothing.
In plain terms
You need limits to grow; too much freedom stops real progress.
What can you take from it?
Set limits to enable real growth.

Where it applies

  • artistic creation
  • project management
  • policy

Putting it to work

  • define scope
  • work with constraints
  • build on reality

Questions to consider

  • What limits help you grow?
  • Can unlimited freedom be bad?

Another view

Some breakthroughs come from removing all constraints.

More from Alfred North Whitehead

  1. There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of t…

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  2. The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simpl…

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  3. In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual clai…

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