Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Alfred North Whitehead

124 quotes

“There is something between the gross specialised values of the mere practical man, and the thin specialised values of the mere scholar. Both types have missed something; and if you add together the two sets of values, you do not obtain the missing elements.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sensitiveness without impulse spells decadence, and impulse without sensitiveness spells brutality.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[F]ertilisation of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Modern science has imposed on humanity the necessity for wandering. Its progressive thought and its progressive technology make the transition through time, from generation to generation, a true migration into uncharted seas of adventure.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The essence of education is that it be religious. Pray, what is religious education? A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And 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 (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The main importance of Francis Bacon’s influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The term many presupposes the term one, and the term one presupposes the term many.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a greatness in the lives of those who build up religious systems, a greatness in action, in idea and in self-subordination, embodied in instance after instance through centuries of growth. There is a greatness in the rebels who destroy such systems: they are the Titans who storm heaven, armed with passionate sincerity. It may be that the revolt is the mere assertion by youth of its right to its proper brilliance, to that final good of immediate joy. Philosophy may not neglect the multifariousness of the world — the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; … But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As extended upon in Adventures of Ideas (1933), Pt. 4, Ch. 16.
“There is nothing in the real world which is merely an inert fact. Every reality is there for feeling: it promotes feeling; and it is felt.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus the universe is to be conceived as attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its own multiplicity and its own unity, of its own imperfection and its own perfection. All the opposites are elements in the nature of things, and are incorrigibly there. The concept of God is the way in which we understand this incredible fact that what cannot be, yet is.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Error is the price we pay for progress.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the kingdom of heaven is with us today.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We find here the final application of the doctrine of objective immortality. Throughout the perishing occasions in the life of each temporal Creature, the inward source of distaste or of refreshment, the judge arising out of the very nature of things, redeemer or goddess of mischief, is the transformation of Itself, everlasting in the Being of God. In this way, the insistent craving is justified — the insistent craving that zest for existence be refreshed by the ever-present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live for evermore.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Modes of Thought (1938).
“Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as if 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 reasoning grasps at straws for premises and floats on gossamer for deductions.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Systems, scientific and 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.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The deliberate aim at Peace very easily passes into its bastard substitute, Anesthesia.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren’t.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Church and Home, Vol. 1 (1964) by United Methodist Church, and Evangelical United Brethren Church, p. 21.
“Buddhism is the most colossal example in the history of applied metaphysics.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in Verhoeven, Martin J. 2001. “Buddhism and Science: Probing the Boundaries Of Faith and Reason.” Religion East and West (1): 77-97. quoted from Malhotra, R. & Viswanathan V. (2022). Snakes in the Ganga : Breaking India…
“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 (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1861–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source