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Alfred North Whitehead Quotes - Page 8

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Common sense is genius in homespun.

Common sense is genius in homespun.

Alfred North Whitehead
Common Sense, Genius, Common

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.

Alfred North Whitehead
Math, Information, Printing
"The Aims of Education". Book by Alfred North Whitehead, 1929.

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Expression, Humanity, Literature
Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.75, Simon and Schuster

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
1925 Science and the Modern World.

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Simplicity, Sides, Found

There is no nature in an instant.

Alfred North Whitehead
Instant

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
Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.228, David R. Godine Publisher

Governments are best classified by considering who are the 'somebodies' they are in fact endeavouring to satisfy.

Alfred North Whitehead
Government, Facts, Considering
"Adventures of Ideas".

Spoken language is merely a series of squeaks.

Alfred North Whitehead
Language, Spoken Language, Series
Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.264, Simon and Schuster

War can protect; it cannot create.

Alfred North Whitehead
War, Math, Protect
Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.50, Open Road Media

Education which is not modern share the fate of all organic things which are kept too long.

Alfred North Whitehead
Education, Fate, Long
Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.77, Simon and Schuster

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Men, Thinking, Society
Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

A clash of doctrine is not a disaster, it is an opportunity.

Alfred North Whitehead
Success, Education, Opportunity
Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.186, Simon and Schuster

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.

Alfred North Whitehead
Adventure, Self, Common Sense

Life is the enjoyment of emotion, derived from the past and aimed at the future.

Alfred North Whitehead
Life, Past, Emotion
Alfred North Whitehead (2012). “Nature and Life”, p.92, Cambridge University Press

To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.

Alfred North Whitehead
Science, Discovery, Two
"The Organization of Thought" (1917)

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience.

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

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. Life refuses to be embalmed alive. The more prolonged the halt in some unrelieved system of order, the greater the crash of the dead society.

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

The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.

Alfred North Whitehead
Plato, Lying, Christianity
1938 Adventures of Ideas.

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

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

A man of science doesn't discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover.

Alfred North Whitehead
Men, Order, Want

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.

Alfred North Whitehead
Angel, Science, Games
Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.

Alfred North Whitehead
Knowledge, Principles, Details
Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

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
Philosophy, Philosophical, Doubt
Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

Our rate of progress is such that an individual human being, of ordinary length of life, will be called on to face novel situations which find no parallel in his past. The fixed person, for the fixed duties, who, in older societies was such a godsend, in the future will be a public danger.

Alfred North Whitehead
Past, Length Of Life, Progress
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1925). “SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD”

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