Alfred North Whitehead: Quotes about life

Alfred North Whitehead was English mathematician and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on life.
Alfred North Whitehead: 224 quotes39 likes

“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.

“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)

“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.

“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.

“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)

“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)

“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)

“The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 285.

“Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 102.

“It is the first step in sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur:—like unto an arrow in the hand of a child. The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect (1927), chapter 3, p. 88; final paragraph of the book.
1920s

“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 book Religion in the Making

Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".
1920s

“In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.”

Alfred North Whitehead book Religion in the Making

Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: &quot;Religion and Dogma&quot; http://www.mountainman.com.au/whiteh_2.htm. <br class="br">1920s

“Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of the infinitude.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 21, June 28, 1941.

“Whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification.”

Alfred North Whitehead

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