Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.
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
Dark
Existing
Age
Delusion
Knowledge
Cherish
History
Medical
Self
Satisfied
Cherishes
Period
Dogmatism
Periods
Finality
Mankind
Modes
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
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
The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''
Alfred North Whitehead
[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.
Alfred North Whitehead
There is a technique, a knack, for thinking, just as there is for doing other things. You are not wholly at the mercy of your thoughts, any more than they are you. They are a machine you can learn to operate.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
Alfred North Whitehead
Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.
Alfred North Whitehead
How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
Alfred North Whitehead
Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants.
Alfred North Whitehead
But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing.
Alfred North Whitehead
Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.
Alfred North Whitehead
The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.
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
One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead
Governments are best classified by considering who are the 'somebodies' they are in fact endeavouring to satisfy.
Alfred North Whitehead
The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
Alfred North Whitehead
