Quote

Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.

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
Civilizations
Civilized
Civilization
Understood

More quotes by 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
Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
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
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
The whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning.
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
Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Everyone is a philosopher. Not everyone is good at it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Value is coextensive with reality.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
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
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 English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Problems are only opportunities in disquise.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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
Image
Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.
Alfred North Whitehead