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Alfred North Whitehead: 224 quotes39 likes

“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

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 32, January 13, 1944.

“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.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1910s, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), ch. 1.

“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

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 22, August 30, 1941.

“A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“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

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), p. 66

“The relevant poems are Milton's Paradise Lost, Pope's Essay on Man, Wordsworth's Excursion, Tennyson's In Memoriam.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction"

“Scientists, animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless, constitute an interesting subject for study.”

Alfred North Whitehead

The Function of Reason (1929), Beacon Books, 1958, p. 16
1920s

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

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 36, January 19, 1945.

“Nothing is more impressive than the fact that as mathematics withdrew increasingly into the upper regions of ever greater extremes of abstract thought, it returned back to earth with a corresponding growth of importance for the analysis of concrete fact. …The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.

“Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 63, Ch. 4 http://books.google.com/books?id=UZeJuLvNq80C&q=&quot;Intolerance+is+the+besetting+sin+of+moral+fervour&quot;&pg=PA50#v=onepage

“We find here the final application of the doctrine of objective immortality. Throughout the perishing occasions in the life of each temporal Creature, the inward source of distaste or of refreshment, the judge arising out of the very nature of things, redeemer or goddess of mischief, is the transformation of Itself, everlasting in the Being of God. In this way, the insistent craving is justified — the insistent craving that zest for existence be refreshed by the ever-present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live for evermore.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1910s, The Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919)

“No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.”

Alfred North Whitehead

"Harvard: The Future," http://books.google.com/books?id=X3k5AQAAIAAJ&q=%22No+member+of+a+crew+is+praised+for+the+rugged+individuality+of+his+rowing%22&pg=PA266#v=onepage The Atlantic Monthly, September 1936 http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/theatlantic/doc/203819851.html?FMT=CITE&FMTS=CITE&type=current&date=Sep+1936&author=Alfred+North+Whitehead&pub=The+Atlantic+(1932-1971)&edition=&startpage=260-270&desc=Harvard:+The+future <br class="br">1930s

“Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. II, ch. 10, sec. 1.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, First Cause, Supreme Being, Chance. Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the experiences of those who have used it…. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 11: "God"

“Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 43, November 11, 1947.

“Identification of rhythm as the causal counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1910s, The Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919)