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Alfred North Whitehead

124 quotes

• “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 (1861–1947) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143.

• “The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Einstein analyses the ideas of time-order and of simultaneity. Primarily (according to his analysis) time-order only refers to the succession of events at a given place. Accordingly each given place has its own time-order. But these time-orders are not independent in the system of nature, and their correlation is known to us by means of physical measurement. Now ultimately all physical measurement depends upon coincidence in time and place.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling. ... identification of rhythm as the causal counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close ... The rhythm is then the life, in the sense in which it can be said to be included within nature.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".

• “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 the quality.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".

• “Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture IV: "Truth and Criticism".

• “We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Education of an Englishman" in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 138 (1926), p. 192.

• “We do not require elaborate training merely in order to refrain from embarking upon intricate trains of inference. Such abstinence is only too easy.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect (1927).

• “Scientists, animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless, constitute an interesting subject for study.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Men can be provincial in time, as well as in place.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things. It has to insist on the scrutiny of the ultimate ideas, and on the retention of the whole of the evidence in shaping our cosmological scheme. Its business is to render explicit, and — so far as may be — efficient, a process which otherwise is unconsciously performed without rational tests.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook. This is transferable from country to country, and from race to race, wherever there is a rational society.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If science is not to degenerate into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses, it must become philosophical and must enter upon a thorough criticism of its own foundations.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[T]he pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Nothing is more impressive than the fact that as mathematics withdrew increasingly into the upper regions of ever greater extremes of abstract thought, it returned back to earth with a corresponding growth of importance for the analysis of concrete fact. ...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 (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[T]he order of nature cannot be justified by the mere observation of nature. For there is nothing in the present fact which inherently refers either to the past or to the future.… [I]t illustrates the anti-rationalism of the scientific public that, when Hume did appear, it was only the religious implications of his philosophy which attracted attention. This was because the clergy were in principle rationalists, whereas the men of science were content with a simple faith in the order of nature.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[N]ature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent: the nightingale for his song: and the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of the human mind.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You cannot think without abstractions; accordingly, it is of the utmost importance to be vigilant in critically revising your modes of abstraction. It is here that philosophy finds its niche as essential to the healthy progress of society. It is the critic of abstractions. A civilisation which cannot burst through its current abstractions is doomed to sterility.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “No epoch is homogeneous; whatever you may have assigned as the dominant note of a considerable period, it will always be possible to produce men, and great men, belonging to the same time, who exhibit themselves as antagonistic to the tone of their age.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[N]ature is a structure of evolving processes. The reality is the process.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The relevant poems are Milton's Paradise Lost, Pope's Essay on Man, Wordsworth's Excursion, Tennyson's In Memoriam.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In a sense, all explanation must end in an ultimate arbitrariness.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The salvation of reality is its obstinate, irreducible, matter-of-fact entities, which are limited to be no other than themselves. Neither science, nor art, nor creative action can tear itself away from obstinate, irreducible, limited facts.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In the past human life was lived in a bullock cart; in the future it will be lived in an aeroplane; and the change of speed amounts to a difference in quality.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Any physical object which by its influence deteriorates its environment, commits suicide.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not to-morrow be demonstrated truth.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “All science must start with some assumptions as to the ultimate analysis of the facts with which it deals. These assumptions are justified partly by their adherence to the types of occurrence of which we are directly conscious, and partly by their success in representing the observed facts with a certain generality, devoid of ad hoc suppositions.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Epochs do not rise from the dead.… [W]hereas you can make a replica of an ancient statue, there is no possible replica of an ancient state of mind. There can be no nearer approximation than that which a masquerade bears to real life. There may be understanding of the past, but there is a difference between the modern and the ancient reactions to the same stimuli.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Every human being is the natural guardian of his own importance.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The ancient world takes its stand upon the drama of the Universe, the modern world upon the inward drama of the Soul.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Often things realised in thought are more vivid than than the same things in inattentive physical experience. But the things apprehended as mental are always subject to the condition that we come to a stop when we come to explore ever higher grades of complexity in their realised relationships. We always find that we have thought of just this — whatever it may be — and of no more.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A clash of doctrines is not a disaster — it is an opportunity.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat; but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[W]e cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The power of God is the worship He inspires.[…] The worship of God is not a rule of safety — it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.”

  Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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