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Alfred North Whitehead Quotes - Page 6

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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.

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

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

Knowledge keeps no better than fish.

Alfred North Whitehead
Fishes

I consider Christian theology to be one of the great disasters of the human race.

Alfred North Whitehead
Christian, Race, Religion
"Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead".

Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.

Alfred North Whitehead
Teach, Subjects

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

Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.

Alfred North Whitehead
Adventure, Civilization, Decay

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

Alfred North Whitehead
Invention, Century, Nineteenth Century
Science and the ModernWorld ch. 6 (1925)

The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.

Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy, Errors, Chiefs
Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.

Alfred North Whitehead
Science, Ideas, Innovation
Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

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
Appreciation, Intellectual, Criticism

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Inspirational, Humble, Ideas
Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.194, David R. Godine Publisher

Value is coextensive with reality.

Alfred North Whitehead
Reality, Values

The world is shocked, or amused, by the sight of saintly old people hindering in the name of morality the removal of obvious brutalities from a legal system.

Alfred North Whitehead
Sight, Names, People
Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.290, Simon and Schuster

Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.

Alfred North Whitehead
Science, Half, Creation
Alfred North Whitehead (1954). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”

Dogmatism is the anti-Christ of learning.

Alfred North Whitehead
Christ, Dogmatism, Anti Christ
Alfred North Whitehead (1968). “Modes of Thought”, p.58, Simon and Schuster

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

Alfred North Whitehead
Creativity, Science, Simplicity
The Concept of Nature ch. 7 (1920)

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
Knowledge And Power, Impossible, Emotion
Alfred North Whitehead (2007). “The Concept of Nature”, p.73, Cosimo, Inc.

Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.

Alfred North Whitehead
Motivational, God, Faith

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

Alfred North Whitehead
Wise, Intelligent, Intelligence
Dialogues (1954) 15 Dec. 1939

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

The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.

Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy, Danger, Chiefs
Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.337, Simon and Schuster

Human nature loses its most precious quality when it is robbed of its sense of things beyond, unexplored and yet insistent.

Alfred North Whitehead
Humanity, Quality, Human Nature
Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.142, Open Road Media

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”

Democracy...is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only a half dozen unbelievers in America, their well-being would be a test of our democracy.

Alfred North Whitehead
Home, America, Safety

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