Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling.
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
Doesn
Finest
Ideas
Depend
Come
Intuition
People
Humble
Intuitions
Depends
Schooling
Quite
Visiting
Moral
Lofty
Inspirational
Formal
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.
Alfred North Whitehead
In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world
Alfred North Whitehead
The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.
Alfred North Whitehead
In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.
Alfred North Whitehead
Our rate of progress is such that an individual human being, of ordinary length of life, will be called on to face novel situations which find no parallel in his past. The fixed person, for the fixed duties, who, in older societies was such a godsend, in the future will be a public danger.
Alfred North Whitehead
The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
Alfred North Whitehead
Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.
Alfred North Whitehead
Seek simplicity, then distrust.
Alfred North Whitehead
All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
Alfred North Whitehead
Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.
Alfred North Whitehead
Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.
Alfred North Whitehead
Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.
Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy is the product of wonder. The effort after the general characterization of the world around us is the romance of human thought.
Alfred North Whitehead
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
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