Quote

When success turns a man's head he faces failure

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
Men
Failure
Head
Turns
Faces
Success

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Image
Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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
Image
We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
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
The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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
Image
A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a 'nexus' and of a 'proposition'. The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat. Process and Reality
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about any things or about some things, without specifications of definite particular things.
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 tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Seek simplicity, then distrust.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Error is the price we pay for progress.
Alfred North Whitehead