Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

A student should not be taught more than he can think about. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside; and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

In all education the main cause of failure is staleness. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

[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] ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Dogmatism is the anti-Christ of learning. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the persecuting people it carries into fiendish sadistic cruelty. Mind you, though this may seem to justify the eighteenth-century Age of Reason in its contention that religion is nothing but an organized, gigantic fraud and a curse to the human race, nothing could be farther from the truth. It possesses these two aspects, the evil one of the two appealing to people capable of naïve hatred; but what is actually happening is that when you get natures stirred to their depths over questions which they feel to be overwhelmingly vital, you get the bad stirred up in them as well as the good; the mud as well as the water. It doesn't seem to matter much which sect you have, for both types occur in all sects.... ~ Alfred North Whitehead

"One and one make two" assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstance are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Technopoly is to say that its information immune system is inoperable. Technopoly is a form of cultural AIDS, which I here use as an acronym for Anti-Information Deficiency Syndrome. This is why it is possible to say almost anything without contradiction provided you begin your utterance with the words "A study has shown ... " or "Scientists now tell us that ... " More important, it is why in a Technopoly there can be no transcendent sense of purpose or meaning, no cultural coherence. Information is dangerous when it has no place to go, when there is no theory to which it applies, no pattern in which it fits, when there is no higher purpose that it serves. Alfred North Whitehead called such information "inert," but that metaphor is too passive. Information without regulation can be lethal. ~ Neil Postman

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

A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

The chief error in philosophy is overstatement. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Religion, according to Alfred North Whitehead, is a phenomenon that begins in wonder and ends in wonder. Feelings of awe, reverence, and gratitude are primary, and these can never be learned from books. We gain them from sitting high on a cliff side, gazing at the sea, lost in reverie and listening to the laughter of children. ~ Gary A. Kowalski

The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

PROCESS PHILOSOPHY, a school greatly influenced by Alfred North Whitehead, holds that mind and brain are manifestations of a single reality, one that is in constant flux. It thus is compatible with classical Buddhist philosophy, which views clear and penetrating awareness of change and impermanence (anicca in Pali) as the essence of insight. Thus, as Whitehead put it, "The reality is the process," and it is a process made up of vital transient "drops of experience, complex, and interdependent." This view is strikingly consistent with recent developments in quantum physics. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

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

A great society is a society in which its men of business think greatly of their functions. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Russell is a Platonic dialogue in himself. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

Every really new idea looks crazy at first. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The motive of success is not enough. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.
Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

All of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

War can protect; it cannot create. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

There is no nature at an instant. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead summed it up best when he remarked that the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the idea of invention itself. We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers - that is to say, as markets. ~ Neil Postman

The many become one and are increased by one. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Life is the enjoyment of emotion, derived from the past and aimed at the future. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

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 ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Connectedness is of the essence of all things of all types. It is of the essence of types, that they be connected. Abstraction from connectedness involves the omission of an essential factor in the fact considered. No fact is merely itself. The penetration of literature and art at their height arises from our dumb sense that we have passed beyond mythology; namely, beyond the myth of isolation. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a 'nexus' and of a 'proposition'. The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat.
Process and Reality ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has advised us to "seek simplicity and distrust it. ~ Scott Richard Shaw

The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

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

The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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 ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

121.George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
122.Max Planck – Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory; Where Is Science Going?; Scientific Autobiography
123.Henri Bergson – Time and Free Will; Matter and Memory; Creative Evolution; The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
124.John Dewey – How We Think; Democracy and Education; Experience and Nature; Logic; the Theory of Inquiry
125.Alfred North Whitehead – An Introduction to Mathematics; Science and the Modern World; The Aims of Education and Other Essays; Adventures of Ideas
126.George Santayana – The Life of Reason; Skepticism and Animal Faith; Persons and Places
127.Vladimir Lenin – The State and Revo ~ Mortimer J. Adler

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. Life refuses to be embalmed alive. The more prolonged the halt in some unrelieved system of order, the greater the crash of the dead society. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language. It is essentially a written language, and it endeavors to exemplify in its written structures the patterns which it is its purpose to convey. The pattern of the marks on paper is a particular instance of the pattern to be conveyed to thought. The algebraic method is our best approach to the expression of necessity, by reason of its reduction of accident to the ghostlike character of the real variable. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

When we are grasped by the vision of a center of value and power more luminous, more inclusive and more true than that to which we are devoted, we initially experience the new as the enemy or the slayer - that which destroys our "god." Alfred North Whitehead wrote, "Religion is the transition from God the Void to God the Enemy, and from God the Enemy to God the Companion." Only with death of our previous image can a new and more adequate one arise. ~ James W. Fowler

The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

In every age of well-marked transition, there is the pattern of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing and there is oncoming a new complex of habit. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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

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. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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