Quote

The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.

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
Preternatural
Solemnity
Professionally
Religious
Point
Many
Good

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Image
There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.
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
You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
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
What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has conceived.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.
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
Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Democracy...is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only a half dozen unbelievers in America, their well-being would be a test of our democracy.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
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
The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical.
Alfred North Whitehead