Quote

I regret that it has been necessary for me in this lecture to administer a large dose of four-dimensional geometry. I do not apologize, because I am really not responsible for the fact that nature in its most fundamental aspect is four-dimensional. Things are what they are.

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
Large
Lectures
Necessary
Geometry
Four
Apologizing
Fact
Fundamental
Administer
Facts
Fundamentals
Lecture
Nature
Regret
Dimensional
Really
Aspect
Dose
Things
Responsible
Apologize

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Image
Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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
Image
When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Governments are best classified by considering who are the 'somebodies' they are in fact endeavouring to satisfy.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Error itself may be happy chance.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The motive of success is not enough.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.
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
There is no nature in an instant.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.
Alfred North Whitehead