Quote

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

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
Decay
Adventure
Travel
Civilization
Full
Without

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Image
The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations.
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 teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad... Truth matters because of beauty.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.
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
There is no nature at an instant.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Religion is what a person does in his solitariness.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development.
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
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
Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.
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
Error itself may be happy chance.
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
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ... The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past.
Alfred North Whitehead