Alfred North Whitehead Quotes - Page 11

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• Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Reasoning, Premises, Straws

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.72, Simon and Schuster

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• We must produce a great age, or see the collapse of the upward striving of our race.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Success, Race, Age

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• When success turns a man's head he faces failure

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Failure, Men, Faces

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• Seek simplicity, then distrust.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Simplicity, Distrust

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• The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Race, Intelligence, Doe

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• The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Men, Dying, Bed

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.2, Simon and Schuster

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• There is no nature at an instant.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Nature, Math, Instant

  Alfred North Whitehead (2013). “The Concept of Nature”, p.61, Courier Corporation

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• Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Art, Adventure, Scrapbooking

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.169, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Extravagance, Harbour, Certain

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.288, Simon and Schuster

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• The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Religious, Good Man, Solemnity

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.59, David R. Godine Publisher

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• 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

  Men, Mind, Principles

  "Science and the Modern World". Book by Alfred North Whitehead. Chapter 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", 1925.

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• I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That's not me.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Selfish, Acceptance, Boss

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• But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Creativity, Reality, Growth

  Alfred North Whitehead (2011). “Religion in the Making”, p.137, Cambridge University Press

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• I regret that it has been necessary for me in this lecture to administer a large dose of four-dimensional geometry. I do not apologize, because I am really not responsible for the fact that nature in its most fundamental aspect is four-dimensional. Things are what they are.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Nature, Regret, Lectures

  Alfred North Whitehead (1920). “The Concept of Nature: Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November, 1919”, Cambridge University Press

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• Many a scientist has patiently designed experiments for the purpose of substantiating his belief that animal operations are motivated by no purposes. He has perhaps spent his spare time in writing articles to prove that human beings are as other animals so that 'purpose' is a category irrelevant for the explanation of their bodily activities, his own activities included. Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Writing, Animal, Interesting

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• Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Teaching, Math, Intellectual

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

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• 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

  Discovery, Weapons, Facts

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Imagination, Way, Facts

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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• It is the business of the future to be dangerous.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Business, Future, Danger

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

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• Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Past, Errors, Language

  Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.57, Open Road Media

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• Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Music, Numbers, Use

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

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• The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Half, Theoretical, Consequence

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Preference, Mathematician, Indifferent

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• 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, and almost any idea which jogs you out of your current abstractions may be better than nothing.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Ideas, Attention, May

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• There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes the philosophy of the epoch.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Philosophy, Numbers, People

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

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