Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

It is a false dichotomy to think of Nature and Man. Mankind is a factor in Nature which exhibits in its most intense form the plasticity of Nature.

Philosophy is an attempt to express the infinity of the universe in terms of the limitations of language.

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.

Philosophers can never hope finally to formulate these metaphysical first principles. Weakness of insight and deficiencies of language stand in the way inexorably. Words and phrases must be stretched towards a generality foreign to their ordinary usage; and however such elements of language be stabilized as technicalities, they remain metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap.

Panic of error is the death of progress, and love of truth is its safeguard.

God is the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of potentiality.

From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.

Russell is a Platonic dialogue in himself.

As soon as high consciousness is reached, the enjoyment of existence is entwined with pain, frustration, loss, tragedy. Amid the passing of so much beauty, so much heroism, so much daring, Peace is then the intuition of permanence. It keeps vivid the sensitiveness to the tragedy; and it sees the fineness beyond the faded level of surrounding fact. Each tragedy is the disclosure of an ideal: What might have been, and was not; What can be. The tragedy was not in vain.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the great wealth of general ideas scattered through them.

His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his writings an inexhaustible mine of suggestion.

"Faraday was asked: "What is the use of this discovery?"
He answered: "What is the use of a child - it grows to be a man.

What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.

Science only deals with half the evidence provided by human experience. It divides the seamless coat — or, to change the metaphor into a happier form, it examines the coat, which is superficial, and neglects the body which is fundamental.

A student should not be taught more than he can think about.

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