Truth Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

15 Truth quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

All Truth quotes Alfred North Whitehead’s page

Alfred North Whitehead’s 15 insights treat truth as a living process, not a static fact. His scientific background and philosophical depth give each line a thoughtful, almost poetic weight.

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It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.

Alfred North Whitehead

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There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.

Alfred North Whitehead

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"Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth.

Alfred North Whitehead

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The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.

Alfred North Whitehead

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I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure,…

Alfred North Whitehead

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“There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.”

Alfred North Whitehead

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Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and…

Alfred North Whitehead

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The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of…

Alfred North Whitehead

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The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to…

Alfred North Whitehead

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The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular…

Alfred North Whitehead

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“Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice;…

Alfred North Whitehead

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“The truth is that science started its modern career by taking over ideas derived from the weakest side of the philosophies of…

Alfred North Whitehead

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More by Alfred North Whitehead

For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested…

Alfred North Whitehead

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Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

Alfred North Whitehead

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The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.

Alfred North Whitehead

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On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.

Alfred North Whitehead

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It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present…

Alfred North Whitehead

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Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of infinitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of…

Alfred North Whitehead

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The many become one and are increased by one.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Alfred North Whitehead

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The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Common sense is genius in homespun.

Alfred North Whitehead

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