Alfred North Whitehead, 1861 - 1947
Harvard University photo, circa 1924
Born: 15 February 1861, Ramsgate, Kent, England
Died: 30 December 1947, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Though young Alfred was a normally healthy child, his parents took it in mind that he was frail and kept him out of school until he was fourteen. In 1879 he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied mathematics and stayed on as a lecturer after graduation. After his marriage in 1891 he started to question his Anglican upbringing, spending seven years carefully considering joining the Roman Catholic Church - and finally deciding he was an agnostic. For a decade he was a professor of mathematics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology at London, then suddenly switched fields and countries to become a professor of philosophy at Harvard.
Biography from Wikipedia and Stanford University
Alfred North Whitehead quotes:
Quotes found : 61 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 5) 1 2 3 4 5 Next
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- "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - A clash of doctrines is not a disaster - it is an opportunity. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - A man of science doesn't discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of "artistic" expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - Common sense is genius in homespun. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead - Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination. permalink
Alfred North Whitehead
Quotes found : 61 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 5) 1 2 3 4 5 Next
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