Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The foundations of the world are to be found, not in the cognitive experience of conscious thought, but in the aesthetic experience of everyday life.
Alfred North Whitehead
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Beauty
Experience
Found
Foundations
Thought
Cognitive
Life
Aesthetic
World
Everyday
Foundation
Conscious
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy is the product of wonder.
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 motive of success is not enough.
Alfred North Whitehead
No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes.
Alfred North Whitehead
Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
Alfred North Whitehead
What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.
Alfred North Whitehead
Spoken language is merely a series of squeaks.
Alfred North Whitehead
Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
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
A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.
Alfred North Whitehead
Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise
Alfred North Whitehead
The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.
Alfred North Whitehead
The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.
Alfred North Whitehead
The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
Alfred North Whitehead
