Alfred North Whitehead Quotes - Page 3

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• The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Creative, Novelty, Metaphysical

  Alfred North Whitehead (1969). “Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology; Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28”, New York : Macmillan

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• 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)

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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

  Self, Oneness, Diversity

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.228, Simon and Schuster

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• Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Wisdom, Math, Science

  "The Organization of Thought" (1917)

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• 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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• An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Experience, Mature Love, Mature

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• The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Men, Boredom, Useless

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.1, Simon and Schuster

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• There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Errors, Facts

  Alfred North Whitehead (1958). “An Introduction to Mathematics”, p.16, New York : Oxford University Press, 1958 [c1948]

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• The essence of Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of God's agency in the world. The record is fragmentary, inconsistent, and uncertain. . . . But there can be no doubt as to what elements in the record have evoked a response from all that is best in human nature. The Mother, the Child, and the bare manger: the lowly man, homeless and self-forgetful, with his message of peace, love, and sympathy: the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair: and the whole with the authority of supreme victory.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Life, Mother, Peace

  1938 Adventures of Ideas.

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• 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

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• Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Running, Heaven, Essentials

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.90, Simon and Schuster

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• The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Plato, Philosophical, Knowledge

  Process and Reality pt. 2, ch. 1 (1929)

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• Each human being is a more complex structure than any social system to which he belongs.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Individual, Social, Structure

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.113, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Art, Travel, Adventure

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• There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Science, Views

  Alfred North Whitehead (1929). “The Aims of Education & Other Essays”

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• Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Speech, Language, Human Nature

  Alfred North Whitehead (1968). “Modes of Thought”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

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• Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Travel, Adventure, Civilization

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.279, Simon and Schuster

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• 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)

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• Philosophy asks the simple question: What is it all about?

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Philosophy, Simple, Asks

  Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.81, Open Road Media

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• Great art is more than a transient refreshment. It is something which adds to the permanent richness of the soul's self-attainment. It justifies itself both by its immediate enjoyment, and also by its discipline of the inmost being. Its discipline is not distinct from enjoyment but by reason of it. It transforms the soul into the permanent realization of values extending beyond its former self.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Art, Writing, Self

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.202, Simon and Schuster

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• Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much closer to the truth. The basis of growth of modern invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Mother, Silly, Exercise

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• The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Science, Aim, Particular

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