Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

300 Sourced Quotes

The idea that physicists would in future have to study the theory of tensors created real panic amongst them following the first announcement that Einstein's predictions had been verified.

Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy works slowly. Thoughts lie dormant for ages; and then, almost suddenly as it were, mankind finds that they have embodied themselves in institutions.

Alfred North Whitehead
Nature can be thought of as a closed system whose mutual relations do not require the expression of the fact that they are thought about.

Alfred North Whitehead
In the first place, there can be no living science unless there is a widespread instinctive conviction in the existence of an Order of Things, and, in particular, of an Order of Nature.

Alfred North Whitehead
The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumed with any spark of vitality.

Alfred North Whitehead
When we consider what religion is for mankind, and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between them.

Alfred North Whitehead
You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.

Alfred North Whitehead
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
We have to remember that while nature is complex with timeless subtlety, human thought issues from the simple-mindedness of beings whose active life is less than half a century.

Alfred North Whitehead
Mathematical reasoning is deductive in the sense that it is based upon definitions which, as far as the validity of the reasoning is concerned (apart from any existential import) needs only the test of self-consistency. Thus no external verification of definitions is required in mathematics, as long as it is considered merely as mathematics.

Alfred North Whitehead
The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.

Alfred North Whitehead
Mathematics in its widest significance is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning.

Alfred North Whitehead
So far as we can see, inorganic entities are vehicles for receiving and storing in a napkin, and for restoring without gain or loss.

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

Alfred North Whitehead
There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.

Alfred North Whitehead
You cannot have first space and then things to put into it, any more than you can have first a grin and then a Cheshire cat to fit on to it.

Alfred North Whitehead
The living cell is to biology what the electron and the proton are to physics.

Alfred North Whitehead
Whenever a text-book is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. It it were easy, the book ought to be burned.

Alfred North Whitehead
Learning is often spoken of as if we are watching the open pages of all the books which we have ever read, and then, when occasion arises, we select the right page to read aloud to the universe.

Alfred North Whitehead
All space measurement is from stuff in space to stuff in space.

Alfred North Whitehead
Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.

Alfred North Whitehead
But if men cannot live on bread alone, still less can they do so on disinfectants.

Alfred North Whitehead
No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.

Alfred North Whitehead
The essence of applied mathematics is to know what to ignore.

Alfred North Whitehead
No more impressive warning can be given to those who would confine knowledge and research to what is apparently useful, than the reflection that conic sections were studied for eighteen hundred years merely as an abstract science, without regard to any utility other than to satisfy the craving for knowledge.

Alfred North Whitehead
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
Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

Alfred North Whitehead
Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.

Alfred North Whitehead
Search for measurable elements among your phenomena, and then search for relations between these measures of physical quantities.

Alfred North Whitehead
All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

Alfred North Whitehead