Alfred North Whitehead: Quotes about life

“The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), p. 100; Ch. 12, April 28, 1938.
Context: The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and, if need be, die for it.

Idea

“The rhythm is then the life, in the sense in which it can be said to be included within nature.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1910s, The Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919)

Life , Nature , Sense

“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

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)
Context: The universities are schools of education, and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty. Both these functions could be performed at a cheaper rate, apart from these very expensive institutions. Books are cheap, and the system of apprenticeship is well understood. So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century. Yet the chief impetus to the foundation of universities came after that date, and in more recent times has even increased. 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.

Life , Imagination , Knowledge , Learning

“The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 349.

Life , Art , Soul

“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

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Life , Pain , History , Optimism

“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)