Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

The only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.

My criticism of Hegel procedure is that when in his discussion he arrives at a contradiction, he construes it as a crisis in the universe.

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

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

There is no nature at an instant.

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.

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.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism 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.

You think the world is what it looks like in fine weather at noon day; I think it is what it seems like in the early morning when one first wakes from deep sleep.

The vastest knowledge of today cannot transcend the buddhi of the Rishis in ancient India; and science in its most advanced stage now is closer to Vedanta than ever before.

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat; but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory.

The only justification in the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary to be used.

The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.

For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.

We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only guide it by taking thought.

The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus .

It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.

Everything of importance has already been seen by someone who did not discover it.

Religion is what a man does with his solitariness.

In all education the main cause of failure is staleness.

Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications.

The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.

The main importance of Francis Bacon's influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.

[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.

Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.

The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir

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

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

An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.

I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.

You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.

Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.

In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.

Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.

From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.

Let me here remind you that the essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things. This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama. This remorseless inevitableness is what pervades scientific thought. The laws of physics are the decrees of fate.

[Beware of] the fallacy of misplaced concreteness [mistaking an abstraction for concrete reality, for actuality]

In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence.

Error is the price we pay for progress.

In the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.

Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, "Seek simplicity and distrust it."

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

[From various of Whitehead's books, not only PR]

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.

There are two principles inherent in the very nature of things, recurring in some particular embodiments whatever field we explore - the spirit of change, and the spirit of conservation. There can be nothing real without both. Mere change without conservation is a passage from nothing to nothing ... Mere conservation without change cannot conserve. For after all, there is a flux of circumstance, and the freshness of being evaporates under mere repetition.

It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.

The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.

The purpose of thinking is to let the ideas die instead of us dying.

Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

Russell is a Platonic dialogue in himself.

The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.

An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion.

The fixed person for the fixed duties who in older societies was such a godsend, in future will be a public danger.

A student should not be taught more than he can think about.

Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling.

Change' is the description of the adventures of eternal objects in the evolving universe of actual things.

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.

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.

In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.

We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.

The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.

I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming ... and a little mad.

It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.

Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.

To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.

From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.

If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

The degeneracy of mankind is distinguished from its uprise by the dominance of chill abstractions, divorced from aesthetic content.

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.

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.

What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.

Science only deals with half the evidence provided by human experience. It divides the seamless coat - or, to change the metaphor into a happier form, it examines the coat, which is superficial, and neglects the body which is fundamental.

Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

The art of progress is to reserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.

Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realised; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.

Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications of definite particular things.

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

The motive of success is not enough.

The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in detail is admitted; fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure.

The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.

Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.

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.

Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.

A Unitarian is a person who believes in at most one God.

Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness.

God is the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of potentiality.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

In England if something goes wrong
say, if one finds a skunk in the garden
he writes to the family solicitor, who proceeds to take the proper measures; whereas in America, you telephone the fire department. Each satisfies a characteristic need; in the English, love of order and legalistic procedure; and here in America, what you like is something vivid, and red, and swift.

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

No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.

The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.

The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical.

Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately destroy the instincts; but until this has occurred, words do not count.

All of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato.

Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment ... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.

The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.