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

Even a light-colored shirt or blouse or clown makeup can cause a reflection on the monitor, obscuring some of the data displayed. ~ Randall Whitehead

Perhaps Nickel was the very afterlife that awaited him, with a White House down the hill and an eternity of oatmeal and an infinite brotherhood of broken boys. ~ Colson Whitehead

My home is full of hope and ghosts. ~ Joshua Whitehead

You need to be strong to survive the labor and to make us greater. We fatten hogs, not because it pleases us but because we need hogs to survive. But we can't have you too clever. We can't have you so fit you outrun us." She ~ Colson 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

If it is true for you, it is true for someone else, and you are no longer alone. ~ Colson Whitehead

The key to in here is the same to surviving out there - you got to see how people act, and then you got to figure out how to get around them like an obstacle course. If you want to walk out of here ~ Whitehead Colson

Freedom was a community laboring for something lovely and rare. ~ Colson 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

I'd never been much of an athlete, due to a physical condition I'd had since birth (unathleticism). Perhaps if there were a sport centered around lying on your couch in a neurotic stupor all day, I'd take an interest. ~ Colson Whitehead

What a world it is, Cora thought, that makes a living prison into your only haven. Was she out of bondage or in its web: how to describe the status of a runaway? ~ Colson Whitehead

It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. The tunnel, the tracks, the desperate souls who found salvation in the coordination of its stations and timetables - this was a marvel to be proud of. She wondered if those who had built this thing had received their proper reward. ~ Colson Whitehead

Life! What Inscrutable Card Shall Ye Throw Next Upon the Soft Felt of Our Days? ~ Colson Whitehead

There are instruments and human players but sometimes a fiddle or a drum make instruments of those who play them, and all are put in servitude to the song. ~ Colson 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

Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there and always underfoot, the insistent gray muck that was pop culture. It stuck to our shoes and we tracked it through our lives. ~ Colson Whitehead

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

In our modern age, cell phone technology permits us to record the constant brutality that occurs all around us; we experience not an uptick in violence but a new kind of witnessing. ~ Colson 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

Here's a tip for new parents: Start lowering those expectations early, it's going to pay off later. ~ Colson Whitehead

the children make of it what they can. What they don't understand today, they might tomorrow. "The Declaration is like a map. You trust that it's right, but you only know by going out and testing it yourself. ~ Colson Whitehead

If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness. ~ Colson Whitehead

The only way to know how long you are lost in the darkness is to be saved from it. ~ Colson 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

Even angels are animals. ~ Colson 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

But if he didn't read, he was a slave. ~ Colson Whitehead

Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death. ~ Colson Whitehead

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

It's like peanut butter and chocolate. Each is great, but they're better together. ~ Richard 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

I'm just trying to keep things rich for me creatively and for the readers who follow me. ~ Colson Whitehead

Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time. ~ Colson 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

Crossing a single street transformed the way people talked, determined the size and condition of the homes, the dimension and character of the dreams. ~ Colson Whitehead

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

I was inspired to become a writer by horror movies and science fiction. ~ Colson Whitehead

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

Spoiler: I didn't win the Main Event. You had suspicions, you say? For one thing, the subtitle of this book would be "The Amazing Life-Affirming Story of an Unremarkable Jerk Who Won the World Series of Poker!" instead of having the word "Death" in it. For another, do these sound like the words of a motherfucker who won a million goddamn dollars? ~ Colson 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

They will have to destroy this city once we deliver the black box. The current bones will not accommodate the marrow of the device. They will have to raze the city and cart off the rubble to less popular boroughs and start anew. ~ Colson 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

Tennessee was cursed. Initially, she assigned the devastation of Tennessee, the blaze and the disease, to justice. The whites got what they deserved for enslaving her people, for massacring another race, for stealing the very land itself. Let them burn by flame or fever, let the destruction started here roll acre by acre until the dead have been avenged. But if people received their just portion of misfortune, what had she done to bring her troubles on herself? ~ Colson Whitehead

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

I think being a writer was a crappy job when you just had typewriters. It was crappy when we just had ink and paper. And it's sort of crappy now. It's always just you and the page. That doesn't change. ~ Colson 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

He possessed a strange facility for the mandatory. ~ Colson 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

They don't give gold bracelets for regrets. ~ Colson Whitehead

If I have three ideas and I'm working on one more than the others, that sort of tells me that I should work on that one. ~ Colson Whitehead

By making a circle of themselves that separated the human spirits within from the degradation without. Noble ~ Colson Whitehead

We dressed ourselves up as Gauguin pictures and careered round Crosby Hall. Mrs. Whitehead was scandalized. She said that Vanessa and I were practically naked. My mother's ghost was invoked once more ... to deplore the fact that I had taken a house in Brunswick Square and had asked young men to share it ... Stories began to circulate about parties at which we all undressed in public. Logan Pearsall Smith told Ethel Sands that he knew for a fact that Maynard had copulated with Vanessa on a sofa in the middle of the drawing room. It was a heartless, immoral, cynical society it was said; we were abandoned women and our friends were the most worthless of young men. ~ Virginia Woolf

The warm, pulsing breath of the sweet grass surged through the open windows in a fashion to turn the head of a stone image. It was exotic, too sweet, exaggerated, like everything else in this climate! Cornelis turned over again, seeking a cool place on the broad bed. Then he sat up in bed, impatiently throwing off the sheet. A thin streak of moonlight edged the bed below his feet. He slipped out of bed, walked over to a window. He leaned out, looking down at the acres of undulating grass. There seemed to be some strange, hypnotic rhythm to it, some vague magic, as it swayed in the night wind. The scent poured over him in great, pulsing breaths. He shut his eves and drew it in, abandoning his senses to its effect.

("Sweet Grass") ~ Henry S. Whitehead

Q: Why write about slavery? Haven't we had enough stories about slavery? Why do we need another one?

A: I could have written about upper middle class white people who feel sad sometimes, but there's a lot of competition. ~ Colson Whitehead

The buttons of his dark blue uniform allude to an ongoing border dispute with his soft belly. ~ Colson Whitehead

How's that training coming along, Griff? Good old Max says you're a natural."

Turner frowned. Any time a white man asked you about yourself, they were about to fuck you over. ~ Colson Whitehead

A philosophical thought is not supposed to be impervious to all criticism; this is the error Whitehead describes of turning philosophy into geometry, and it is useful primarily as a way of gaining short-term triumphs in personal arguments that no one else cares (or even knows) about anyway. A good philosophical thought will always be subject to criticisms (as Heidegger's or Whitehead's best insights all are) but they are of such elegance and depth that they change the terms of debate, and function as a sort of "obligatory passage point" (Latour's term) in the discussions that follow.
Or in other words, the reason Being and Time is still such a classic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of readers almost a century later, is not because Heidegger made "fewer mistakes" than others of his generation. Mistakes need to be cleaned up, but that is not the primary engine of personal or collective intellectual progress. ~ Graham Harman

The farm's carpenters were true artisans - they had to be to keep all those book from jumping off the shelves, so many wonders did they contain. ~ Colson Whitehead

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

When you talk about this trip, and you will, because it was quite a journey and you witnessed many things, there were ups and downs, sudden reversals of fortune and last-minute escapes, it was really something, you will see your friends nod in recognition. ~ Colson Whitehead

digging for the truth, by definition, unearths things - and some things were safer left buried. ~ Christine M. Whitehead

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

I'm here because I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else, but I don't know about you. ~ Colson 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

The world may be mean, but people don't have to be, not if they refuse. ~ Colson Whitehead

People wore different kinds of chains across their lifetimes, but it wasn't hard to interpret rebellion, even when the rebels wore costumes to deny blame. ~ Colson Whitehead

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

Don't go searching for a subject, let your subject find you. You can't rush inspiration. ... Once your subject finds you, it's like falling in love. It will be your constant companion. Shadowing you, peeping in your windows, calling you at all hours to leave messages like, Only you understand me. ~ Colson 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

of a runaway? Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the ~ Colson Whitehead

[W]hile the use of non-lethal weapons such as tasers and LEDIs may not necessarily reduce the number of civilian casualties, they have been largely accepted as the humane alternative to deadly force because they make the use of force appear far less dramatic and violent than it has in the past.
Contrast, for instance, the image of police officers beating Rodney King with billy clubs as opposed to police officers continually shocking a person with a taser. Both are severe forms of abuse. However, because the act of pushing a button is far less dramatic and visually arresting than swinging a billy club, it can come across as much more humane to the general public. This, of course, draws much less media coverage and, thus, less bad public relations for the police. ~ John W. 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

Some daughter of one of the gentry planters, perhaps? Those girls had the domestic virtues. But - he was comfortable enough with his good servants at Fairfield House. His yearnings had little relation to somebody to preside over his household. Somehow, to Cornelis, these young ladies of the planter gentry were not alluring, vital. The most attractive of them, Honoria Macartney, he could hardly imagine beside him perpetually. Honoria had the dead-white skin of the Caucasian creole lady whose face has been screened from the sun since infancy.

("Sweet Grass") ~ Henry S. Whitehead

We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab and you had no warning. It was the last time you were going to have Lake Tung Ting shrimp in that kinda shady Chinese restaurant and you had no idea. If you had known, perhaps you would have stepped behind the counter and shaken everyone's hand, pulled out the disposable camera and issued posing instructions. But you had no idea. There are unheralded tipping points, a certain number of times that we will unlock the front door of an apartment. At some point you were closer to the last time than you were to the first time, and you didn't even know it. You didn't know that each time you passed the threshold you were saying goodbye. ~ Colson Whitehead