Alfred North Whitehead Quotes - Page 3

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• 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

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• 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)

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

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Average, Bottom

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• 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

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

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Memories, Vivid, Anticipation

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• The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Real, People, History

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.20, David R. Godine Publisher

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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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• No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Religion, Followers, Type

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

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• It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery - Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string of his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Morning, Ocean, Adventure

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• 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

  28 Copy quote

• Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Moral, Sin, Intolerance

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.50, 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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• 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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• 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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• 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

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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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• Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Life, Math, Mind

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.160, David R. Godine Publisher

  21 Copy quote

• Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Thinking, Speech, Speak

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

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Mind, Impressive, Metaphysics

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• A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Thinking, Ideas, Vacuums

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.225, David R. Godine Publisher

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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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• 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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• The vigour of civilised societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth while. Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications. All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of a good job well done. There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment, the Peace brought by something worth while. Such personal gratification arises from aim beyond personality.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Strong, Jobs, Men

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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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