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Alfred North Whitehead Quotes - Page 2

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

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Philosopher

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

Alfred North Whitehead
Simplicity, Distrust

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.

Alfred North Whitehead
Beauty, Everyday, Foundation

How the past perishes is how the future becomes.

Alfred North Whitehead
Past
Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.238, Simon and Schuster

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.

Alfred North Whitehead
Race, Religion, Would Be

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Learning, Order, Firsts
Alfred North Whitehead (1968). “Modes of Thought”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Mistake, Talking, Law
Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.363, David R. Godine Publisher

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Average, Bottom

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Style, Mind, Lasts
Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

Error is the price we pay for progress.

Alfred North Whitehead
Errors, Progress, Pay
"Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology". Book by Alfred North Whitehead, 1929.

There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.

Alfred North Whitehead
Inspirational, Truth, Science
Dialogues prologue (1954)

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Memories, Vivid, Anticipation

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Independent, Conversation, Circumstances

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.

Alfred North Whitehead
Beauty, Discovery, Matter

Problems are only opportunities in disquise.

Alfred North Whitehead
Opportunity, Problem

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Life, Time, Inspiration
Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.287, Simon and Schuster

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Truth, Interesting, Important
Adventures of Ideas pt. 4, ch. 16 (1933)

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.

Alfred North Whitehead
Creativity, Men, Creating
Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.366, David R. Godine Publisher

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Mind, Impressive, Metaphysics

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.

Alfred North Whitehead
India, Today, Ancient

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Dream, Dreamer, Fulfilled

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
Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.224, Simon and Schuster

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Art, Patterns, Recognition
Dialogues (1954) (entry for 10 June 1943)

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.

Alfred North Whitehead
Understanding, Nuisance, Decay
Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.159, Simon and Schuster

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.

Alfred North Whitehead
Real, Knowledge, Science
Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.187, Simon and Schuster

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