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Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.
Alfred North Whitehead
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Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Humans
Driven
Life
Notion
Evolution
Forward
General
Progress
Apprehension
Language
Notions
Human
Existing
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
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
The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.
Alfred North Whitehead
To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.
Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.
Alfred North Whitehead
Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.
Alfred North Whitehead
The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.
Alfred North Whitehead
...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead
No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of rationality.
Alfred North Whitehead
I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.
Alfred North Whitehead
It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.
Alfred North Whitehead
The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
Democracy...is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only a half dozen unbelievers in America, their well-being would be a test of our democracy.
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
The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.
Alfred North Whitehead
It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately destroy the instincts but until this has occurred, words do not count.
Alfred North Whitehead
