Alfred North Whitehead Quotes - Page 6

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• What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Time, Truth, Majority

  Dialogues (1954) (entry for 30 Aug. 1941)

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• No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Doe, Penalties, Periods

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.272, David R. Godine Publisher

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• In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Ideas, Issues

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

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• No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Metaphysics, Unconscious, Secure

  Alfred North Whitehead (1933). “Adventure of Ideas”

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• 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

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• The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternatives, the better and the worse. Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilization there is always an element of unrest.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Mean, Adventure, Men

  "Adventures of Ideas".

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• Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Friendship, Want, Shields

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.206, Simon and Schuster

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• War can protect; it cannot create.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  War, Math, Protect

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

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• I am sure that one secret of a successful teacher is that he has formulated quite clearly in his mind what the pupil has got to know in precise fashion. He will then cease from half-hearted attempts to worry his pupils with memorizing a lot of irrelevant stuff of inferior importance.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Teacher, Fashion, Teaching

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.36, Simon and Schuster

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• 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

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• In the history of the world the prize has not gone to those species which specialized in methods of violence, or even in defensive armor. In fact, nature began with producing animals encased in hard shells for defense against the ill of life. But smaller animals, without external armor, warm-blooded, sensitive, alert, have cleared those monsters off the face of the earth.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Animal, World, Earth

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• The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  People, Tradition, Concerned

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• 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]

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• There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Attitude, Party, Progress

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.119, Simon and Schuster

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• Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Art, Self, Secret

  "Les Amis du Cinéma" by Alfred North Whitehead, (Paris, October 1, 1952); as quotes in "Telling It Like It Is" by Paul Bowden, (p. 182), 2011.

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• We think of the number "five" as applying to appropriate groups of any entities whatsoever - to five fishes, five children, five apples, five days... We are merely thinking of those relationships between those two groups which are entirely independent of the individual essences of any of the members of either group. This is a very remarkable feat of abstraction; and it must have taken ages for the human race to rise to it

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Children, Taken, Independent

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• Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty; so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition; and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Science, Order, Doe

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

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• There is a technique, a knack, for thinking, just as there is for doing other things. You are not wholly at the mercy of your thoughts, any more than they are you. They are a machine you can learn to operate.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Learning, Thinking, Technique

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• 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".

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• No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Contemplation, Diagrams

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• Every really new idea looks crazy at first.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Inspirational, Courage, Crazy

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• Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Adventure, Clarification, Rationalism

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

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• Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Interesting, Purpose, Study

  Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Whitehead's The Function of Reason”, p.9, Agora Publications, Inc.

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• No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  God, Reason, Given

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.178, Simon and Schuster

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• Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Inspirational, Education, Teacher

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

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