Alfred North Whitehead Quotes
The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.
Alfred North Whitehead
The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.
Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, 1929)
A clash of doctrines is not a disaster--it is an opportunity.
Alfred North Whitehead
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
Alfred North Whitehead (Quoted in The Atlantic Monthly, 1926)
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead (Science and the Modern World, 1925)
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change.
Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, 1929)
Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.
Alfred North Whitehead
Error is the price we pay for progress.
Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, 1929)
Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.
Alfred North Whitehead (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1954)
Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead (The Aims of Education, 1929)
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead
It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead
A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.
Alfred North Whitehead (Quoted in Nature Magazine, 1916)
Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
Alfred North Whitehead
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
Alfred North Whitehead (Adventures of Ideas, 1933)
Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
Alfred North Whitehead
The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, 1929)
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
Alfred North Whitehead (Adventures of Ideas, 1933)
Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.
Alfred North Whitehead
The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, Seek simplicity and distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead (The Concept of Nature, 1926)
No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.
Alfred North Whitehead
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.
Alfred North Whitehead (Science and the Modern World, 1925)
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true... But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, 1929)
Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
Alfred North Whitehead
There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
Alfred North Whitehead (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1954)
Every philosophy is tinged with the colouring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.
Alfred North Whitehead (Science and the Modern World, 1925)
A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.
Alfred North Whitehead (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1954)
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
Alfred North Whitehead (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1954)
The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial... he cannot go along with currents and trends.
Alfred North Whitehead
If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
Alfred North Whitehead (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1954)
In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.
Alfred North Whitehead
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
Alfred North Whitehead (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1954)
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.
Alfred North Whitehead
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
Alfred North Whitehead (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1954)
The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.
Alfred North Whitehead
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
Alfred North Whitehead
Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.
Alfred North Whitehead (Science and the Modern World, 1926)
No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
Alfred North Whitehead (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1954)
Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.
Alfred North Whitehead (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1954)
It is rigid dogma that destroys truth; and, please notice, my emphasis is not on the dogma, but on the rigidity. When men say of any question, 'This is all there is to be known or said of the subject; investigation ends here,' that is death.
Alfred North Whitehead (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 1954)
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 simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, "Seek simplicity and distrust it."
Alfred North Whitehead (The Concept of Nature, 1926)
Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.
Alfred North Whitehead (Science and the Modern World, 1925)
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