Alfred North Whitehead famous quotes

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Change #Art #Order

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Ignorance #Stupidity #Political

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Dog #Cat #Animal

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Independent #Literature #Way

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Zero #Math #Needs

From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Music #Education #Children

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Wisdom #Grows

There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Truth #Half #Half Truth

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

#Philosophy #Done #Wonder

Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Ideas #Innovation #Done

Philosophy is the product of wonder.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Philosophy #Wonder

When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Average #Bottom

The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Math #Spirit #Madness

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Book #Pages #Select

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Wisdom #Math #Science

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

#Plato #Philosophical #Knowledge

The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Silly #Innovation #Development

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Learning #Science #Being Different

Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Inspirational #Pupils #Should

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Inspirational #Time #Educational

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

#Life #Suggestions #Hints

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Time #Tragedy #Definitions

Seek simplicity but distrust it.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Simplicity #Distrust

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

#Simplicity #Philosopher #Motto

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Creativity #Science #Simplicity

Every really new idea looks crazy at first.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Inspirational #Courage #Crazy

Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#God #Passing #Passings

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Real #Giving #Waiting

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

#Progress #Evolution #Language

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

#Courage #Hero #Bravery

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

#Imagination #Experience #Tragedy

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Art #Adventure

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

#Art #Patterns #Recognition

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

#Science #Ideas #Firsts

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience...
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Majority #Morality #Given

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.''
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Fall #Science #Simple

One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Perception #Foundation #Eternity

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Adventure #Civilization #Decay

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

#Math #Development #May

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Fate #Ideas #Mind

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

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Sight #Names #People

Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Running #Heaven #Essentials

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Moving #Fate #Sea

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

#Men #Thinking #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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Adventure #Mean #Men

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Strong #Jobs #Men

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
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Song #Nature #Congratulations

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

#Fake #Branches #Mathematics

Religion is what a person does in his solitariness.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Inspirational #Life #Doe

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Truth #Interesting #Important

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Education #Real #Book

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Mother #Silly #Exercise

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

#Math #Organization #Imagination

The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Art #Writing #Self

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
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Children #Taken #Independent

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Moving #Talking #Long

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Greek #Firsts #Mathematics

It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Peace #Self #Personality

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Learning #Race #Brain

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Life #Mother #Children

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

#Life #Symbolism #Texture

Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Life #Degenerates #Decent

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Past #Use #Holy

Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Independent #Conversation #Circumstances

Education with inert ideas is not only useless; it is above all things harmful.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Education #Ideas #Useless

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

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Civilization #Age #Degrees

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

#Doe #Faces #Spirit

The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Thinking #Ideas #Vacuums

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

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Math #Errors #Facts

No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Discovery #Weapons #Facts

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

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Differences #Experience

Error itself may be happy chance.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Errors #May #Chance

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

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Writing #Men #Gains

Fertilization of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Art #Soul #Reason

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Change #Practice #Dumb

Learning preserves the errors of the past as well as its wisdom.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Learning #Past #Errors

Common sense is genius in homespun.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Stars #Attitude #Sunset

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

#Philosophy #Science #Justify

Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has conceived.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Mind #Impressive #Metaphysics

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.
-- Alfred North Whitehead

#Important #Principles #Details