Quote

Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.

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
Subjectivity
Corrections
Initial
Initials
Excess
Consciousness
Philosophy
Self
Correction

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Image
Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment.
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
No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The motive of success is not enough.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
I am sure that one secret of a successful teacher is that he has formulated quite clearly in his mind what the pupil has got to know in precise fashion. He will then cease from half-hearted attempts to worry his pupils with memorizing a lot of irrelevant stuff of inferior importance.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The main importance of Francis Bacon's influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ... The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus .
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Governments are best classified by considering who are the 'somebodies' they are in fact endeavouring to satisfy.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion.
Alfred North Whitehead