Quote

Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.

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
Religion
Tending
Life
Degenerate
Degenerates
Formula
Formulas
Increasingly
Decent
Embellish
Comfortable
Wherewith

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Image
Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.
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
Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Problems are only opportunities in disquise.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
In all education the main cause of failure is staleness.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows, for details are swallowed up in principles. The details for knowledge which are important, will be picked up ad hoc in each avocation of life, but the habit of the active utilization of well-understood principles is the final possession of WISDOM.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
We must produce a great age, or see the collapse of the upward striving of our race.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.
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
Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Systems, scientific or philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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
Image
Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Value is coextensive with reality.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
Alfred North Whitehead