Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced. Alfred North Whitehead More Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead More Quotes From Alfred North Whitehead I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether. Alfred North Whitehead juxtapositiondealsmatter 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 courageadventuretravel Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. Alfred North Whitehead horsecivilizationthinking Problems are only opportunities in disquise. Alfred North Whitehead problemopportunity Youth is life as yet unblemished by much tragedy, but hardly by TV. Alfred North Whitehead youthtvstragedy It is natural to think that an abstract science cannot be of much importance in affairs of human life, because it has omitted from its consideration everything of real interest. Alfred North Whitehead affairrealthinking It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties. Alfred North Whitehead meritfuturescience Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning. Alfred North Whitehead secretphilosophyscience A man of science doesn't discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover. Alfred North Whitehead wantmenorder Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning. Alfred North Whitehead greatnesseducationalignorance Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close. Alfred North Whitehead casualidentificationanalogies For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance. Alfred North Whitehead successfulseadoe The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumed with any spark of vitality. Alfred North Whitehead teachingnumbersideas The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people. Alfred North Whitehead concernedtraditionpeople In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives on its merits and is transformed by its power of recognizing its imperfections. Alfred North Whitehead adventuremeanideas The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance. Alfred North Whitehead effortpeopleideas In England if something goes wrong--say, if one finds a skunk in the garden--he writes to the family solicitor, who proceeds to take the proper measures; whereas in America, you telephone the fire department. Each satisfies a characteristic need; in the English, love of order and legalistic procedure; and here in America, what you like is something vivid, and red, and swift. Alfred North Whitehead gardenwritingorder A Unitarian is a person who believes in at most one God. Alfred North Whitehead unitarianpersonsbelieve But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a 'nexus' and of a 'proposition'. The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat. Alfred North Whitehead ratsrealclass Mathematics, in its widest significance, is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning. Alfred North Whitehead mathematicsformaldevelopment
