Alfred North Whitehead Quotes About Habits

Quotes about: Habits

• 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.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Book, Math, Thinking

  An Introduction to Mathematics ch. 5 (1911)

• 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

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

• 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

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

• 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

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.207, 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

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin