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Quotes from Science and the Modern World — Alfred North Whitehead

1861–1947 England

← All quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

45 quotes

No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of all rationality.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

The ancient world takes its stand upon the drama of the Universe, the modern world upon the inward drama of the Soul.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

Every human being is the natural guardian of his own importance.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not to-morrow be demonstrated truth.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

Sensitiveness without impulse spells decadence, and impulse without sensitiveness spells brutality.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

In a sense, all explanation must end in an ultimate arbitrariness.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

A clash of doctrines is not a disaster — it is an opportunity.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

The worship of God is not a rule of safety—it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

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.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

Men can be provincial in time, as well as in place.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

Any physical object which by its influence deteriorates its environment, commits suicide.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

In the past human life was lived in a bullock cart; in the future it will be lived in an aeroplane; and the change of speed amounts to a difference in quality.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat; but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory.

Science and the Modern World (1925)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Alfred North Whitehead (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.