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Portrait of Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead

(1861–1947) Writer United Kingdom

356 quotes in 1351 categories

Alfred North Whitehead’s ideas challenge conventional thinking, inviting readers to consider reality as a dynamic process. In these 356 quotations, his complex concepts are distilled into memorable lines that hint at his broader philosophical system, making his abstract theories more approachable for anyone curious about process philosophy.

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Alfred North Whitehead was a writer from the United Kingdom, best known for Science and the modern world: Lowell lectures, 1925.

Quick Facts About Alfred North Whitehead

Born: February 15, 1861
Died: December 30, 1947
Nationality: United Kingdom
Profession: Writer
Notable works: Science and the modern world: Lowell lectures, 1925
Known for: Principia Mathe, Process and Reality, A Treatise on Universal Algebra, Whitehead's point-free geometry, Whitehead's theory of gravitation
Spouse: Evelyn Ada Maud Rice Willoughby-Wade

About Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Awards & Honors

Order of Merit Sylvester Medal Butler Medal James Scott Prize Lectureship Fellow of the Royal Society honorary doctor of Harvard University honorary doctor of the University of St Andrews

Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Spoken language is merely a series of squeaks.

Alfred North Whitehead

Inspirational

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How the past perishes is how the future becomes.

Alfred North Whitehead

Future

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Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

Alfred North Whitehead

Refuge

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Every really new idea looks crazy at first.

Alfred North Whitehead

Courage

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We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

Alfred North Whitehead

Generalities

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Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.

Alfred North Whitehead

Essentials

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Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience.

Alfred North Whitehead

Aesthetic

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Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

Alfred North Whitehead

Creativity

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The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.

Alfred North Whitehead

Battle

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Human nature loses its most precious quality when it is robbed of its sense of things beyond, unexplored and yet insistent.

Alfred North Whitehead

Human nature

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A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.

Alfred North Whitehead

Culture

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Mathematics, in its widest significance, is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning.

Alfred North Whitehead

Development

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

Alfred North Whitehead

Being true

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Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.

Alfred North Whitehead

Acquisition

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The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the…

Alfred North Whitehead

Adventure

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No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.

Alfred North Whitehead

Abstraction

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An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable…

Alfred North Whitehead

Accounts

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To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor…

Alfred North Whitehead

Abstraction

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The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there…

Alfred North Whitehead

Future

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Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted…

Alfred North Whitehead

Asks

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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…

Alfred North Whitehead

Infinitude

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What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information.…

Alfred North Whitehead

Hands

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There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in…

Alfred North Whitehead

Excellence

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People make the mistake of talking about 'natural laws.' There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature.

Alfred North Whitehead

Failure

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“Connectedness is of the essence of all things of all types. It is of the essence of types, that they be connected.…

Alfred North Whitehead

Connectedness

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Many a scientist has patiently designed experiments for the purpose of substantiating his belief that animal operations are motivated by no purposes.…

Alfred North Whitehead

Activity

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Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by…

Alfred North Whitehead

Body

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“The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of…

Alfred North Whitehead

Aim

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Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language. It is essentially a written language, and it endeavors to exemplify…

Alfred North Whitehead

Accidents

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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

Addresses

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“It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite…

Alfred North Whitehead

Habits

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In the history of the world the prize has not gone to those species which specialized in methods of violence, or even…

Alfred North Whitehead

Animal

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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

Biology

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It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and…

Alfred North Whitehead

Abstract

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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

Age of reason

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The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. . . . Civilisation is the maintenance of social order, by its…

Alfred North Whitehead

Adventure

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The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn…

Alfred North Whitehead

Abstract

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The essence of Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of…

Alfred North Whitehead

Agency

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The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternatives,…

Alfred North Whitehead

Adventure

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Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.

Alfred North Whitehead

Emotion

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Alfred North Whitehead by topic

Science (40) Life (39) Inspirational (35) Education (32) Mathematics (29) Time (27) Philosophy (27) Ideas (27) Humans (26) Nature (24) Religion (22) Mathematical (22) Math (22) Men (20) Knowledge (20) Adventure (19) World (18) Facts (18) Civilization (17) Art (17) May (16) Love (16) Doe (16) Truth (15) Learning (15)