Alfred North Whitehead quotes - page 8

Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things. (Alfred North Whitehead)
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. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy may not neglect the multifariousness of the world - the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
He gave them speech, and they became souls. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
The essence of education is that it be religious. Pray, what is religious education? A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. (Alfred North Whitehead)
In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must beware of what I will call "inert ideas"-that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations. In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful-Corruptio optimi, pessima. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Education with inert ideas is not only useless it is above all things harmful. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is thepast, and it is the future. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
'One and one make two' assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstance are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must beware of what I will call "inert ideas"-that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations. In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful-Corruptio optimi, pessima [the corruption of the best is the worst]. (Alfred North Whitehead)
Philosophy finds religion, and modifies it; and conversely religion is among the data of experience which philosophy must weave into its own scheme. Religion is an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity of emotion that non-temporal generality which primarily belongs to conceptual thought alone. In the higher organisms the differences of tempo between the mere emotions and the conceptual experiences produce a life-tedium, unless this supreme fusion has been effected. The two sides of the organism require a reconciliation in which emotional experiences illustrate a conceptual justification, and conceptual experiences find an emotional illustration. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
In "Religion in the Making," by A. N. Whitehead... the approach is philosophical, and there are many interesting and valuable observations. But Dr. Whitehead occasionally indulges himself, like all metaphysicians, in what has a suspicious resemblance to nonsense. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
In a book called Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect, Whitehead points out that perception is usually a matter of symbols, just like language; I say I see a book when I actually see a red oblong. The Transactionists (who have been influenced by Whitehead rather than Husserl) take this one stage further, and point out that when I 'perceive' something, I am actually making a bet with myself that what I perceive is what I think it is. In order to act and live at all, I have to make these bets; I cannot afford to make absolutely certain that things are what I think they are. But this means that we should not take our perceptions at face value, any more than Nietzsche was willing to take philosophy at its face value; we must allow for prejudice and distortion. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead