Alfred North Whitehead Quotes:

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead, David Ray Griffin (1978). “Process and reality: an essay in cosmology”, Free Pr

Topics: Change, Art, Order, Managing Change, Enemy Of Progress

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.

Topics: Ignorance, Stupidity, Political, Knowledge And Ignorance, Ignorance Is Bliss

If a dog jumps into 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.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.183, David R. Godine Publisher

Topics: Dog, Cat, Animal, Inspirational Animal, Inspirational Cat

The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence; every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.54, Open Road Media

Topics: Independent, Literature, Way, Philosophic

The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.

Topics: Zero, Math, Needs, Civilised

From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.

Topics: Music, Education, Children, Math Education

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Wisdom, Grows

There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.

source: - Dialogues prologue (1954)

Topics: Truth, Half, Half Truth, Whole Truth, Honest Truth

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1968). “Modes of Thought”, p.168, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Philosophy, Done, Wonder, Childlike Wonder

Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

Topics: Ideas, Innovation, Done, Innovation And Business, Inspirational And Innovation

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Topics: Philosophy, Wonder, Characterization

When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.

Topics: Average, Bottom

The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.

Topics: Math, Spirit, Madness, Math And Love, Mathematical Logic

Learning is often spoken of as if we are watching the open pages of all the books which we have ever read, and then, when occasion arises, we select the right page to read aloud to the universe.

Topics: Book, Pages, Select

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

Topics: Wisdom, Math, Science, Discovery In Science

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Topics: Plato, Philosophical, Knowledge, Characterization, Footnotes

The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.

Topics: Silly, Innovation, Development

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

Topics: Learning, Science, Being Different, Familiar Things

Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.

Topics: Inspirational, Pupils, Should

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.20, Open Road Media

Topics: Inspirational, Time, Educational, Generalities, Brainstorming

Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.

Topics: Life, Suggestions, Hints

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

Topics: Time, Tragedy, Definitions

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

Topics: Simplicity, Distrust

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

Topics: Simplicity, Philosopher, Motto, Guiding Stars, Simple And Complex

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

Topics: Creativity, Science, Simplicity

Every really new idea looks crazy at first.

Topics: Inspirational, Courage, Crazy, Original Ideas

Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.

Topics: God, Passing, Passings, Insignificance

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 realised; 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.

Topics: Real, Giving, Waiting

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Topics: Progress, Evolution, Language, Apprehension

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

Topics: Courage, Hero, Bravery, True Courage, Bravery And Fear

The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations.

Topics: Imagination, Experience, Tragedy

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

Topics: Art, Adventure, Scrapbooking, Inspirational Adventure Time

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Topics: Art, Patterns, Recognition, Aesthetics

Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.

Topics: Science, Ideas, Firsts, New Ideas, Original Ideas

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience...

Topics: Art, Patterns, Art Is

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.

Topics: Majority, Morality, Given, Immorality

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

Topics: Clothes, Brain, Way

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation 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.''

Topics: Fall, Science, Simple, Simple And Complex

One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.

Topics: Nature, Animal, Trends

Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas' - that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.

Topics: Ideas, Mind, Combination

The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Perception, Foundation, Eternity

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

Topics: Adventure, Civilization, Decay, Adventure And Risk

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

Topics: Math, Development, May, Math And Science

The importance of an individual thinker owes something to chance. For it depends upon the fate of his ideas in the minds of his successors.

Topics: Fate, Ideas, Mind

It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment.

Topics: Self, Finals, Intellect

The world is shocked, or amused, by the sight of saintly old people hindering in the name of morality the removal of obvious brutalities from a legal system.

Topics: Sight, Names, People

Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God.

Topics: Religion, Human Nature, Reactions

Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.

Topics: Running, Heaven, Essentials, Social Systems, Clockwork

In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your heroism, not all your social charm, not all your wit, not all your victories on land or at sea, can move back the finger of fate. To-day we maintain ourselves. To-morrow science will have moved forward yet one more step, and there will be no appeal from the judgment which will then be pronounced on the uneducated.

Topics: Moving, Fate, Sea

A great society is a society in which its men of business think greatly of their functions.

Topics: Men, Thinking, Society, Great Society

The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. . . . Civilisation is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilisation, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilisation there is always an element of unrest. For sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilised order survives on its merits, and is transformed by its power of Recognizing its imperfections.

Topics: Adventure, Mean, Men, Disclosure, Recourse

The vigour of civilised societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth while. Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications. All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of a good job well done. There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment, the Peace brought by something worth while. Such personal gratification arises from aim beyond personality.

Topics: Strong, Jobs, Men, Job Well Done, Harbour

The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir

Topics: Race, Littles, Way

Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.

Topics: Song, Nature, Congratulations, Odes

On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.

Topics: Fake, Branches, Mathematics, Exactitude, Exactness

Religion is what a person does in his solitariness.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Doe

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

Topics: Truth, Interesting, Important, Propositions, Tautology

Whenever a text-book is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. It it were easy, the book ought to be burned.

Topics: Education, Real, Book, Reviewers

Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much closer to the truth. The basis of growth of modern invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.

Topics: Mother, Silly, Exercise, Intellectual Curiosity, Vigorous

The whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning.

Topics: Math, Organization, Imagination

The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.

Topics: Race, Intelligence, Doe

Great art is more than a transient refreshment. It is something which adds to the permanent richness of the soul's self-attainment. It justifies itself both by its immediate enjoyment, and also by its discipline of the inmost being. Its discipline is not distinct from enjoyment but by reason of it. It transforms the soul into the permanent realization of values extending beyond its former self.

Topics: Art, Writing, Self, Refreshments

We think of the number "five" as applying to appropriate groups of any entities whatsoever - to five fishes, five children, five apples, five days... We are merely thinking of those relationships between those two groups which are entirely independent of the individual essences of any of the members of either group. This is a very remarkable feat of abstraction; and it must have taken ages for the human race to rise to it

Topics: Children, Taken, Independent, Abstraction

The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular sorts of entities. So that for example, no mathematical truths apply merely to fish, or merely to stones, or merely to colours. So long as you are dealing with pure mathematics, you are in the realm of complete and absolute abstraction. . . . Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about.

Topics: Moving, Talking, Long, Moving In

Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.

Topics: Men, Enemy, Different

Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications of definite particular things.

Topics: Greek, Firsts, Mathematics, Specifications

It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.

Topics: Obvious, Contemplating, Extraordinary

Peace is self-control at its widest-at the width where the "self" has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality.

Topics: Peace, Self, Personality, Width

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.

Topics: Interesting, Important, Energy

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.

Topics: Learning, Race, Brain, Mathematical Problems

The essence of Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of God's agency in the world. The record is fragmentary, inconsistent, and uncertain. . . . But there can be no doubt as to what elements in the record have evoked a response from all that is best in human nature. The Mother, the Child, and the bare manger: the lowly man, homeless and self-forgetful, with his message of peace, love, and sympathy: the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair: and the whole with the authority of supreme victory.

Topics: Life, Mother, Children, Forgetful

Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

Topics: Life, Symbolism, Texture, Degeneration

Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.

Topics: Life, Degenerates, Decent, Comfortable Life

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.

Topics: Past, Use, Holy, Knowledge Of The Past, Holy Ground

Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.

Topics: Independent, Conversation, Circumstances

Education with inert ideas is not only useless; it is above all things harmful.

Topics: Education, Ideas, Useless, Unschooling

Governments are best classified by considering who are the "somebodies" they are in fact endeavoring to satisfy.

Topics: Government, Facts, Considering

It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.

Topics: Civilization, Age, Degrees, Inconsistent, Instability

Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science.

Topics: Doe, Faces, Spirit

The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.

source: - Twitter post from Jan 31, 2017

Topics: Earth, Rise Above

With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.

Topics: Powerful, Sight, Ideas

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.

Topics: Thinking, Ideas, Vacuums, Stature

The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.

Topics: Real, People, History

There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.

Topics: Math, Errors, Facts, Calculations

No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.

Topics: Contemplation, Diagrams, Mathematical

Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling.

Topics: Inspirational, Humble, Ideas

The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.

Topics: Discovery, Weapons, Facts, Abstraction

No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.

Topics: God, Reason, Given

The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.

Topics: Differences, Experience

Error itself may be happy chance.

Topics: Errors, May, Chance

Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.

Topics: Adventure, Civilization, Decay

A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content.

Topics: Writing, Men, Gains

Fertilization of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art.

Topics: Art, Soul, Reason, Fertilization

In every age of well-marked transition, there is the pattern of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing and there is oncoming a new complex of habit.

Topics: Change, Practice, Dumb

Learning preserves the errors of the past as well as its wisdom.

Topics: Learning, Past, Errors

Common sense is genius in homespun.

Topics: Common Sense, Genius, Common

After you understand about the sun and the stars and the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset.

Topics: Stars, Attitude, Sunset, Rotation

Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning.

Topics: Philosophy, Science, Justify

Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has conceived.

Topics: Mind, Impressive, Metaphysics, Vedanta

In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows, for details are swallowed up in principles. The details for knowledge which are important, will be picked up ad hoc in each avocation of life, but the habit of the active utilization of well-understood principles is the final possession of WISDOM.

Topics: Important, Principles, Details, Utilization

All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

Topics: Teacher, Details, Mastery

Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.

source: - Russell L. Kleinbach, Karl Marx, Alfred North Whitehead (1982). “Marx via process: Whitehead's potential contribution to Marxian social theory”

Topics: Perception, Triumph, Negative, Postmodernism, Constructivism

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.

Topics: Emotion, Life Is, Ninety

So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.

source: - Carter G. Woodson (2006). “The Mis-Education of the Negro”, p.9, Book Tree

Topics: Information, Printing, Century

Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.

Topics: Cabinets, Events, Substance

To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor of a more concrete element of nature.

Topics: Mean, Doe, Elements

The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.

Topics: Half, Theoretical, Consequence

An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion.

Topics: Determination, Opinion, Preservation

...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.

Topics: Dark, Self, Age, Finality, Dogmatism

There are two principles inherent in the very nature of things, recurring in some particular embodiments whatever field we explore - the spirit of change, and the spirit of conservation. There can be nothing real without both. Mere change without conservation is a passage from nothing to nothing. . . . Mere conservation without change cannot conserve. For after all, there is a flux of circumstance, and the freshness of being evaporates under mere repetition.

Topics: Change, Real, Two, Recurring

There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.

Topics: Views, Two, Justice, Deductions

Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

Topics: Music, Numbers, Use, Poetry And Music, Numbers And Math

There is no nature at an instant.

Topics: Nature, Instant

But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing.

Topics: Creativity, Reality, Growth, Unlimited Possibilities

Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.

Topics: Development, Derivatives, Medieval

Each human being is a more complex structure than any social system to which he belongs.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.113, David R. Godine Publisher

Topics: Individual, Social, Structure, Social Systems

Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.

Topics: Math, Ordinary, Language, Written Language

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

Topics: Literature, Absence

Error is the price we pay for progress.

Topics: Errors, Progress, Pay

The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls

Topics: Men, Soul, Speech

...the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.

Topics: Simplicity, Sides, Found, Far Side

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.

Topics: Wisdom, Ambition, Virtue

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.98, David R. Godine Publisher

Topics: Courage, Travel, Adventure, Fervor, Senile

I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.

Topics: Matter, Juxtaposition, Deals

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 claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.

Topics: Loyalty, World, Way

The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.

Topics: Appreciation, College, Issues, Rational Thought

It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.

Topics: May, Mood, Paradox

How the past perishes is how the future becomes.

Topics: Past

Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton , I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.

Topics: Thinking, Knowing, Too Much, Knowing Too Much

Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.

Topics: Men, Feelings, Culture

The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.

Topics: Stupidity, Battle, Defense, Battle Cry

God is in the world, or nowhere, creating continually in us and around us. Insofar as man partakes of this creative process does he partake of the divine, of God, and that participation is his immortality ....

Topics: Creativity, Men, Creating

The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.

Topics: Appreciation, Intellectual, Criticism, Emergence

The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical.

Topics: Education, Adequate, Antithesis, Liberal Education, Technical Education

Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants.

Topics: Friendship, Want, Shields

Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.

Topics: Extravagance, Harbour, Certain

The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.

Topics: Justice, Citizens, Used, Pacifism, Pacifist

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.

Topics: Science, Merit, Duty

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

Topics: Religion, Lasts, Refuge, Savagery

You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.30, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Wise, May, Bases

An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.

Topics: Experience, Mature Love, Mature

Problems are only opportunities in disquise.

Topics: Opportunity, Problem

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.

Topics: Speaks Out, Deeds, Action

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

source: - Dialogues (1954) 15 Dec. 1939

Topics: Wise, Intelligent, Intelligence, Quickness

Great people plant trees they'll never sit under.

Topics: Wisdom, People, Tree

The purpose of education is not to fill a vessel but to kindle a flame.

Topics: Flames, Purpose, Kindles, Purpose Of Education

I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Preoccupation, Type, Rescue

No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.

Topics: Inspirational, Thank You, Wise, Joy And Gratitude, Inspirational Thank You

The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Past, Use It Or Lose It, Use Of Knowledge, Knowledge Of The Past

In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Mean, Adventure, Ideas

The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development.

source: - "Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead".

Topics: Silly, Creativity, Ideas, Creative Thinking, Creative Thought

The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.

source: - 1925 Science and the Modern World.

Topics: Adventure, Safety, Unattainable

Philosophy asks the simple question: What is it all about?

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.81, Open Road Media

Topics: Philosophy, Simple, Asks

Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.142, Open Road Media

Topics: Motivation, Ideas, Progress, Reinterpretation

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.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.187, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Real, Knowledge, Science, Real Knowledge

People make the mistake of talking about 'natural laws.' There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.363, David R. Godine Publisher

Topics: Mistake, Talking, Law, Natural Law

In all education the main cause of failure is staleness.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Failure, Teaching, Causes

The foundations of the world are to be found, not in the cognitive experience of conscious thought, but in the aesthetic experience of everyday life.

Topics: Beauty, Everyday, Foundation, Cognitive

Everyone is a philosopher. Not everyone is good at it.

Topics: Philosopher

In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Mirrors, World, Location

I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.

source: - Church and Home (published by United Methodist Church, and Evangelical United Brethren Church), Volume 1, p. 21, 1964.

Topics: Religious, Affection, Persons, Religious Person

The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in detail is admitted; fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure.

Topics: Adventure, Self, Common Sense, Dogmatism, Dogmatic

Great dreamers' dreams are never fulfilled, they are always transcended.

Topics: Dream, Dreamer, Fulfilled

Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Style, Mind, Lasts, Educated Mind

In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1968). “Modes of Thought”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Learning, Order, Firsts

What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.

Topics: Memories, Vivid, Anticipation

No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Religion, Followers, Type

It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery - Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string of his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry.

Topics: Morning, Ocean, Adventure, Pacific Ocean

I consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race... It would be impossible to imagine anything more un - Christianlike than theology.

Topics: Race, Religion, Would Be

Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.50, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Moral, Sin, Intolerance

Systems, scientific or philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.159, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Understanding, Nuisance, Decay, Philosophic

The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1969). “Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology; Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28”, New York : Macmillan

Topics: Creative, Novelty, Metaphysical

The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad... Truth matters because of beauty.

Topics: Beauty, Discovery, Matter, Recapitulation

Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.

Topics: Thinking, Speech, Speak

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.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.160, David R. Godine Publisher

Topics: Life, Math, Mind, Infinite Possibilities, Finitude

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

source: - An Introduction to Mathematics ch. 5 (1911)

Topics: Book, Math, Thinking, Cavalry, Decisive Moments

The vastest knowledge of today cannot transcend the buddhi of the Rishis in ancient India; and science in its most advanced stage now is closer to Vedanta than ever before.

Topics: India, Today, Ancient, Vedanta, Ancient India

There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes the philosophy of the epoch.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Philosophy, Numbers, People

The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.337, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Philosophy, Danger, Chiefs

The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.228, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Self, Oneness, Diversity, Self Identity

Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Character, Personality, Encounters

The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.

Topics: Science, Aim, Particular

The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.1, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Men, Boredom, Useless

It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

source: - 1911 Introduction to Mathematics.

Topics: Philosophical, Writing, Talking, Profundity, Talking Nonsense

I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.

source: - "Adventures of Ideas".

Topics: Beauty, Art, Peace

Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1954). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”

Topics: Science, Half, Creation

It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately destroy the instincts; but until this has occurred, words do not count.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Men, Long, May

Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1968). “Modes of Thought”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Speech, Language, Human Nature, Written Language, Artificiality

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.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Math, Ideas, Issues, Straws, Deductions

Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1925). “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge”

Topics: Expression, Feelings, Desire

The motive of success is not enough.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Success, Enough, Motive

It is the business of future to be dangerous.... The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

Topics: Future, Civilization, Progress

Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Angel, Science, Games

You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.

Topics: Morning, Sleep, Thinking, Deep Sleep, Fine Weather

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.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.272, David R. Godine Publisher

Topics: Doe, Penalties, Periods, Idealistic

War can protect; it cannot create.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.50, Open Road Media

Topics: War, Math, Protect

No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1933). “Adventure of Ideas”

Topics: Metaphysics, Unconscious, Secure

I am sure that one secret of a successful teacher is that he has formulated quite clearly in his mind what the pupil has got to know in precise fashion. He will then cease from half-hearted attempts to worry his pupils with memorizing a lot of irrelevant stuff of inferior importance.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.36, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Teacher, Fashion, Teaching, Memorizing, Half Hearted

To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1958). “An Introduction to Mathematics”, p.4, New York : Oxford University Press, 1958 [c1948]

Topics: Ontology, Logic, Certainty, Transitory

There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.

source: - Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.119, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Attitude, Party, Progress, Partisanship