Alfred North Whitehead - General Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

View all Alfred North Whitehead Quotes
Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Alfred North Whitehead
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Alfred North Whitehead
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
A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is one exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.

Alfred North Whitehead
The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.

Alfred North Whitehead
Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.

Alfred North Whitehead
In a general way the whole period of education is dominated by this threefold rhythm. Till the age of thirteen or fourteen there is the romantic stage, from fourteen to eighteen the stage of precision, and from eighteen to two and twenty the stage of generalization.

Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy is the product of wonder. The effort after the general characterization of the world around us is the romance of human thought.

Alfred North Whitehead
To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.

Alfred North Whitehead
No part of Mathematics suffers more from the triviality of its initial presentation to beginners than the great subject of series... the general ideas are never disclosed and thus the examples, which exemplify nothing, are reduced to silly trivialities.

Alfred North Whitehead