Quote

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

Alfred North Whitehead

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Simplicity
Seek
Natural
Every
Guiding
Life
Distrust
Motto
Simplest
Philosopher

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Image
The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Speak out in acts the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor of a more concrete element of nature.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
A Unitarian is a person who believes in at most one God.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about any things or about some things, without specifications of definite particular things.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has conceived.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
It is natural to think that an abstract science cannot be of much importance in affairs of human life, because it has omitted from its consideration everything of real interest.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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