Quote

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

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
Always
Questions
Expect
Penetrates
However
Heights
Beyond
Gaze
Answers
Penetrate
Vision
Height
Simple
Reaching
Must
Block

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Image
Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. Thus religion is solitariness and if you are never solitary, you are never religious.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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
Image
Speak out in acts the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Art heightens the sense of humanity. It gives an elation to feeling which is supernatural...A million sunsets will not spur us on towards civilization. It requires Art to evoke into consciousness the finite perfections which lie ready for human achievement.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The only justification in the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary to be used.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. Life refuses to be embalmed alive. The more prolonged the halt in some unrelieved system of order, the greater the crash of the dead society.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Routine is the god of every social system it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Religion is what a man does with his solitariness.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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
Image
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The vastest knowledge of today cannot transcend the buddhi of the Rishis in ancient India and science in its most advanced stage now is closer to Vedanta than ever before.
Alfred North Whitehead