We cannot think first and act afterward. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. Alfred North Whitehead More Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead More Quotes From Alfred North Whitehead The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it. Alfred North Whitehead starsdisappointmentfather 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 unattainablesafetyadventure 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 criticismintellectualappreciation 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 antithesisadequateeducation Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants. Alfred North Whitehead shieldswantfriendship Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives. Alfred North Whitehead harbourextravagancecertain The fixed person for the fixed duties who in older societies was such a godsend, in future will be a public danger. Alfred North Whitehead fixedbusinessdanger Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth. Alfred North Whitehead truthheavenlying The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory. Alfred North Whitehead aimparticularscience If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced, and almost any idea which jogs you out of your current abstractions may be better than nothing. Alfred North Whitehead mayattentionideas As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death. Alfred North Whitehead adherencemeanreligion Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. Alfred North Whitehead individualdoereligion The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change. Alfred North Whitehead stupiditydefensebattle The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation. Alfred North Whitehead airplanediscoveryscience The vitality of thought is in adventure. Idea's won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervour, live for it, and, if need be, die for it. Their inheritors receive the idea, perhaps now strong and successful, but without inheriting the fervour; so the idea settles down to a comfortable middle age, turns senile, and dies. Alfred North Whitehead strongadventurescience A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay. Alfred North Whitehead realadventurepast Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography. Alfred North Whitehead recordsstonesdesire The term many presupposes the term one , and the term one presupposes the term many. Alfred North Whitehead term The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort. Alfred North Whitehead unityeffortvision Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements; ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest. Alfred North Whitehead judgementrealinteresting
