Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas' - that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.
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
Without
Received
Must
Fresh
Mind
Thrown
Things
Combination
Aware
Utilized
Merely
Inert
Call
Combinations
Ideas
Tested
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.
Alfred North Whitehead
After you understand about the sun and the stars and the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset.
Alfred North Whitehead
I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.
Alfred North Whitehead
Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
Philosophy asks the simple question: What is it all about?
Alfred North Whitehead
Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness.
Alfred North Whitehead
In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections.
Alfred North Whitehead
The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
Alfred North Whitehead
There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.
Alfred North Whitehead
Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
Alfred North Whitehead
The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.
Alfred North Whitehead
The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.
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
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
A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
Alfred North Whitehead
In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.
Alfred North Whitehead
The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.
Alfred North Whitehead
Error itself may be happy chance.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
