whitehead

Plato and Pythagoras stand nearer to modern physical science than does Aristotle. The two former were mathematicians, whereas Aristotle was the son of a doctor, though of course he was not hereby ignorant of mathematics. The practical counsel to be derived from Pythagoras, is to measure, and thus to express quality in terms of numerically determined quantity. But the biological sciences, then and till our own time, have been overwhelmingly classificatory. Accordingly, Aristotle by his Logic throws the emphasis on classification. The popularity of Aristotelian Logic retarded the advance of physical science throughout the Middle Ages. If only the schoolmen had measured instead of classifying, how much they might have learnt! Classification is necessary. But unless you can progress form classification to mathematics, your reasoning will not take you very far.

You cannot consider wisdom or folly, progress or decadence, except in relation to some standard of judgment, some end in view. Such standards, such ends, when widely diffused, constitute the driving force of ideas in the history of mankind.

adventure of ideas, p. 4

Between them, the Hebrews and the Greeks provided a program for discontent. But the value of their discontent lies in the hope which never deserted their glimpses of perfection.

We see here the first stage of the introduction of great ideas. They start as speculative suggestions in the minds of a small, gifted group. They acquire a limited application to human life at the hands of various sets of leaders with special functions in the social structure. A whole literature arises which explains how inspiring is the general idea, and how slight need be its effect in disturbing a comfortable society. Some transition has been produced by the agency of the new idea. But on the whole the social system has been inoculated against the full infection of the new principle. It takes its place among the interesting notions which have a restricted application.

But a general idea is always a danger to the existing order. The whole bundle of its conceivable special embodiments in various usages of society constitutes a program of reform. At any moment the smouldering unhappiness of mankind may seize on some such program and initiate a period of rapid change guided by the light of its doctrines. In this way, the conception of the dignity of human nature was quietly energizing in the minds of Roman officials, producing somewhat better government and nerving men like Marcus Aurelius to rise to the height of their appointed task. It was a worthy moral force, but society had been inoculated against its revolutionary application. For six hundred years, the ideal of the intellectual and moral grandeur of the human soul had haunted the ancient Mediterranean world. It had in a way transformed the moral ideas of mankind: it had readjusted religions: and yet it had failed to close with the basic weakness of the civilization in which it flourished. It was the fain light of dawn of a new order of life.

adventure of ideas, p. 15

A gracious simple mode of life, combined with a fortunate ignorance, endowed mankind with its most precious instrument of progress—the impracticable ethics of Christianity.

A standard had now been created, expressed in concrete illustrations foolproof against perversions. This standard is a gauge by which to test the defects of human society. So long as the Galilean images are but dreams of an unrealized world, so long they must spread the infection of an uneasy spirit.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 17

Great ideas enter into reality with evil associates and with disgusting alliances. But the greatness remains, nerving the race to its slow ascent.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 18

On the whole, well-established religious institutions are to be reckoned among the conservative forces of society. They soon become the grant support of what Clement had termed ‘communal custom’. But the ultimate ideals, of which they profess themselves the guardians, are a standing criticism of current practices.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 18

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language. Such ideas cannot be grasped singly, one by one in isolation. They require that mankind advances in its apprehension of the general nature of things, so as to conceive systems of ideas elucidating each other. But the growth of generality of apprehension is the slowest of all evolutionary changes.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 24

The history of ideas is a history of mistakes. But through all mistakes it is also the history of the gradual purification of conduct…. In this way Plato is justified in his saying, The creation of the world—that is to say, the world of civilized order—is the victory of persuasion over force.

Impracticable ideals are a program for reform. Such a program is not to be criticized by immediate possibilities. Progress consists in modifying the laws of nature so that the Republic on Earth may conform to that Society to be discerned ideally by the divination of Wisdom.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 42

All advanced thinkers, sceptical or otherwise, are apt to be intolerant, in the past and also now. On the whole, tolerance is more often found in connection with a genial orthodoxy. The apostles of modern tolerance—in so far as it exists—are Erasmus, the Quakers, and John Locke. They should be commemorated in every laboratory, in every church, and in every court of law.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 50

Centuries, sometimes thousands of years, have to elapse before thought can capture action. It is typical of this gap, that Aristotle’s manuscripts are said to have been stowed in a cellar for two hundred years, and even to this day Plato is mainly valued as a religious mystic and a supreme literary artist.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 55

A mere unqualified demand for liberty is the issue of shallow philosophy, equally noxious with the antithetical cry for mere conformation to standard pattern.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 56

[L]ife is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

adventure of ideas location, p. 80

There has been a growth, slow and wavering, of respect for the preciousness of human life. This is the humanitarian spirit, gradually emerging in the slow sunrise of a thousand years.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 83

The creation of the world—said Plato—is the victory of persuasion over force. The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternative, the better and the worse. Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live 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.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 83

A great society is a society in which its men of business think greatly of their functions. Low thoughts mean low behavior, and after a brief orgy of exploitation low behavior means a descending standard of life.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 98

There can be no successful democratic society till general education conveys a philosophic outlook.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 98

Philosophy is not a mere collection of noble sentiments. A deluge of such sentiments does more harm than good. Philosophy is at once general and concrete, critical and appreciate of direct intuition. It is not—or, at least, should not be—a ferocious debate between irritable professors. It is a survey of possibilities and their comparison with actualities. In philosophy, the fact, the theory, the alternatives, and the ideal, are weighed together. Its gifts are insight and foresight, and a sense of the worth of life, in short, that sense of importance which nerves all civilized effort. Mankind can flourish in the lower stages of life with merely barbaric flashes of thought. But when civilization culminates, the absence of a coordinating philosophy of life, spread throughout the community, spells decadence, boredom, and the slackening.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 98

Philosophy is an attempt to clarify those fundamental beliefs which finally determine the emphasis of attention that lies at the base of character.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 99

It is our business—philosophers, students, and practical men—to re-create and reenact a vision of the world, including those elements of reverence through and through with unflinching rationality. Such a vision is the knowledge which Plato identified with virtue. Epochs for which, within the limits of their development, this vision has been widespread are the epochs unfading in the memory of mankind.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 99

But modern scholarship and modern science reproduce the same limitations as dominated the bygone Hellenistic epoch, and the bygone Scholastic epoch. They canalize thought and observation within predetermined limits, based upon inadequate metaphysical assumptions dogmatically assumed. The modern assumptions differ from older assumptions, not wholly for the better. They exclude from rationalistic thought more of the final values of existence. The intimate timidity of professionalized scholarship circumscribes reason by reducing its topics to triviality, for example, to bare sense and to tautologies. It then frees itself from criticism by dogmatically handing over the remainder of experience to an animal faith or a religious mysticism, incapable of rationalization. The world will again sink into the boredom of drab detail of rational thought, unless we retain int he sky some reflection of light from the sun of Hellenism.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 118

There is not greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party-spirit.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 119

[T]he word ‘curiosity’ somewhat trivializes that inward motive which has driven men. In the greater sense…‘curiosity’ means the craving of reason that the facts discriminated in experience be understood. It means the refusal to be satisfied with the bare welter of fact, or even with the bare habit of routine. The first step in science and philosophy has been made when it is grasped that every routine exemplifies a principle which is capable of statement in abstraction from its particular exemplifications.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 141

So far as concerns religious problems, simple solutions are bogus solutions….

For religion is concerned with our reactions of purpose and emotion due to our personal measure of intuition into the ultimate mystery of the universe. WE must not postulate simplicity. The witness of history and of common sense tells us that systematic formulations are potent engines of emphasis, of purification, and of stability.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 161

[An] attack upon systematic thought is treason to civilization. Yet the great minds who laid the foundations for our modern mentality—John Locke, for example—had reason for their dissatisfaction with the traditional dogmatic theology….Their true enemy was the doctrine of dogmatic finality, a doctrine which flourished and is flourishing with equal vigour throughout Theology, Science, and Metaphysics….These errors are not confined to religious thought. They have infected all departments.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 162

Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized. And they have this property, that the appropriation of them in the understanding unveils truths concerning our own natures. It has been said that the great dramatic tragedies in their representations before audiences act as a purification of the passions. Int he same way, the great periods of history act as an enlightenment. They reveal ourselves to ourselves.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 164

Plato…the greatest metaphysician, the poorest systematic thinker.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 166

The essence of Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of his agency in the world. The record is fragmentary, inconsistent, and uncertain. It is not necessary for me to express any opinion as to the proper reconstruction of the most likely tale of historic fact….But there can be not doubt as to what elements in the record have evoked a response from all that is best in human nature. The Mother, the Child, and the bare manger; the lowly man, homeless and self-forgetful, with his message of peace, love, and sympathy: the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair: and the whole with the authority of supreme victory.

Can there be any doubt that the power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act [the life of Christ], of that which Plato divined in theory?

Adventures of Ideas, p. 167

[T]he worst of unqualified omnipotence is that it is accompanied by responsibility for every detail of very happening.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 169

It is the business of philosophical theology to provide a rational understanding of the rise of civilization, and of the tenderness of mere life itself, in a world which superficially is founded upon the clashings of senseless compulsion. I am not disguising my belief that in this task, theology has largely failed. The notion of the absolute despot has stood in the way. The doctrine of Grace has been degraded, and the doctrines of the Atonement are mostly crude. The defect of the liberal theology of the last two hundred years is that it has confined itself to the suggestion of minor, vapid reasons why people should continue to go to church in the traditional fashion.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 170

Must ‘religion’ always remain as a synonym for ‘hatred’?….

The religions spirit is always in process of being explained away, distorted, buried. Yet, since the travel of mankind towards civilization, it is always there.

The task of Theology is to show how the World is founded on something beyond mere transient fact, and how it issues in something beyond the perishing of occasions. The temporal World is the stage of finite accomplishment. We ask of Theology to express that element in perishing lives which is undying by reason of its expression of perfections proper to our finite natures. In this way we shall understand how life includes a mode of satisfaction deeper than joy or sorrow.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 172

Now, so far as concerns beliefs of a general character, it is much easier for them to destroy emotion than to generate it. In any survey of the adventure of ideas nothing is more surprising than the ineffectiveness of novel general ideas to acquire for themselves an appropriate emotional pattern of intensity. Profound flashes of insight remain ineffective for centuries, not because they are unknown, but by reason of dominant interests which inhibit reaction to that type of generality. The history of religion is the history of the countless generations required for interest to attach itself to profound ideas. For this reason religions are so often more barbarous than civilizations in which they flourish

Adventures of Ideas, p. 171

Truth is a qualification which applies to Appearance alone. Reality is just itself, and it is nonsense to ask whether it be true or false. Truth is the conformation of Appearance to Reality.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 241

The most un-Greek thing that we can do, is to copy the Greeks. For emphatically they were not copyists.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 274

The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 274

A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 279

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 tragedy as a living agent persuading the world to aim at 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.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 286

The deepest definition of Youth is, Life as yet untouched by tragedy. And the finest flower of youth is to know the lesson in advance of the experience, undimmed.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 287

Youth is too chequired to be termed a happy period. It is vivid rather than happy. The memories of youth are better to live through, than is youth itself….Youth is not peaceful in any ordinary sense of that term. In youth despair is overwhelming. There is then no tomorrow, no memory of disasters survived.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 287

Moral codes have suffered from the exaggerated claims made for them. The dogmatic fallacy has here done its worst. Each such code has been put out by a God on a mountain top, or by a Saint in a cave, or by a divine Despot on a throne, or, at the lowest, by ancestors with a wisdom beyond later question. In any case, each code is incapable of improvement; and unfortunately in details they fail to agree either with each other or with our existing moral intuitions. The result is that the world is shocked, or amused, by the sight of saintly old people hindering in the name of morality the removal of obvious brutalities from a legal system.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 290

Each society has its own type of perfection, and puts up with certain blots, at that stage inevitable. Thus the notion that there are certain regulative motions, sufficiently precise to prescribe details of conduct, for all reasonable beings on Earth, in every planet, and in every star-system, is at once to be put aside.

Adventures of Ideas, p. 291

[I]n some sense or other, justification is the basis of all religion. Your character is developed according to your faith. This is the primary religious truth from which no one can escape. Religion is force of belief cleansing the inward parts. For this reason the primary religious virtue is sincerity, a penetrating sincerity.

religion in the making, p. 15

The conduct of external life is conditioned by environment, but is receives its final quality, on which its worth depends, from the internal life which is the self-realization of existence. Religion is the art and the theory of the internal life of man, so far as it depends on the man himself and on what is permanent in the nature of things.

religion in the making, p. 16

Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. It runs through three stages, if it evolves to its final satisfaction. It is the transition from God the void to God the enemy, and from God the enemy to God the companion.

Thus religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious.

religion in the making, p. 16

The great religious conceptions which haunt the imaginations of civilized mankind are scenes of solitariness: Prometheus chained to his rock, Mohomet brooding in the desert, the meditations of the Buddha, the solitary Man on the cross. It belongs to the depths of the religious spirit to have felt forsaken, even by God.

religion in the making, p. 19

In religion we induce, in magic we compel.

religion in the making, p. 26

In a communal religion you study the will of God in order that He may preserve you; in a purified religion, rationalized under the influence of the world-concept, you study his goodness in order to be like him. It is the difference between the enemy you conciliate and the companion whom you imitate.

religion in the making, p. 41

The Buddha gave his doctrine to enlighten the world: Christ gave his life. It is for Christians to discern the doctrine.

religion in the making, p. 56

The life of Christ is not an exhibition of over-ruling power. Its glory is for those who can discern it, and not for the world. Its power lies in its absence of force.

religion in the making, p. 57

[Y]ou cannot confine any important reorganization to one sphere of thought….You cannot shelter theology from science, or science from theology; nor can you shelter either of them from metaphysics, or metaphysics from either of them. There is no short cut to truth.

Religion, therefore, while in the framing of dogmas it must admit modifications from the complete circle of our knowledge,still brings its own contribution of immediate experience.

religion in the making, p. 79

Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do wit it. A merely well informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth. What we should aim at producing is men who possess both culture and expert knowledge in some special direction.

the aims of education, p. 1

In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful. […] Except at rare intervals of intellectual ferment, education in the past has been radically infected with inert ideas. That is the reason why uneducated clever women, who have seen much of the world, are in middle life so much the most cultured part of the community. They have been saved from this horrible burden of inert ideas. Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas.

But mankind is naturally specialist. One man sees a whole subject, where another can find only a few detached examples. I know that is seems contradictory to allow for specialism in a curriculum especially designed for a broad culture. Without contradictions the world would be simpler, and perhaps duller. But I am certain that in education wherever you exclude specialism you destroy life.

the aims of education, p. 10

The best education is to be found in gaining the utmost information from the simplest apparatus.

the aims of education, p. 11

Nothing but a special study can give any appreciation for the exact formulation of general ideas, for their relations when formulated, for their service in the comprehension of life.

the aims of education, p. 12

Style, in the finest sense, is the last acquirement of the education mind; it is also the most useful.

the aims of education, p. 12

Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas.

the aims of education, p. 2

We enunciate two educational commandments. “Do not teach too many subjects,” and again, “What you teach, teach thoroughly.”

the aims of education, p. 2

From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.

the aims of education, p. 2

[W]hen ideals have sunk to the level of practice, the result is stagnation.

the aims of education, p. 29

You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.

the aims of education, p. 30

Now wisdom is the way in which knowledge is held. It concerns the handling of knowledge, its selection for the determination of relevant issues, its employment to add value to our immediate experience. This mastery of knowledge, which is wisdom, is the most intimate freedom obtainable.

the aims of education, p. 30

The only avenue towards wisdom is by freedom in the presence of knowledge. But the only avenue towards knowledge is by discipline in the acquirement of ordered fact.

the aims of education, p. 30

There can be no mental development without interest.

the aims of education, p. 31

It should be the chief aim of a university professor to exhibit himself in his own true character—that is, as an ignorant man thinking, actively utilising his small share of knowledge.

the aims of education, p. 37

Education is the guidance of the individual towards a comprehension of the art of life; and by the art of life I mean the most complete achievement of varied activity expressing the potentialities of that living creature in the face of its actual environment.

the aims of education, p. 39

The great religions of civilisation include among their original elements revolts against the inculcation of morals as a set of isolated prohibitions.

the aims of education, p. 39

The vitality of religion is shown by the way in which the religious spirit has survived the ordeal of religious education.

the aims of education, p. 39

Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge. This is an art very difficult to impart. Whenever a textbook is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place.

the aims of education, p. 4

The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual activity, delicate, receptive, responsive to stimulus.

the aims of education, p. 6

There is no royal road to learning through an airy path of brilliant generalizations. There is a proverb about the difficulty of seeing the wood because of the trees?.The problem of education is to make the pupil see the wood by means of the trees.

the aims of education, p. 6

Moral education is impossible apart from the habitual vision of greatness.

the aims of education, p. 69

The life of man is founded on Technology, Science, Art and Religion. All four are inter-connected and issue from his total mentality. But there are particular intimacies between Science and Technology, and between Art and Religion. No social organisation can be understood without reference to these four underlying factors.

the aims of education, p. 72

The art of reasoning consists in getting hold of the subject at the right end, of seizing on the few general ideas which illuminate the whole, and of persistently marshaling all subsidiary facts around them.

the aims of education, p. 84

The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.

the aims of education, p. 93

Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts: it is a way of illuminating the facts.

the aims of education, p. 93

The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experiences have feeble imaginations.

the aims of education, p. 93

You must be free to think rightly and wrongly, and free to appreciate the variousness of the universe undisturbed by its perils.

the aims of education, p. 93

A university is imaginative or it is nothing—at least nothing useful.

the aims of education, p. 96

Do you want your teachers to be imaginative? Then encourage them to research. Do you want you researchers to be imaginative? Then bring them into intellectual sympathy with the young at the most eager, imaginative period of life, when intellects are just entering upon their mature discipline.

the aims of education, p. 97

It is the function of the scholar to evoke into life wisdom and beauty which, apart from his magic, would remain lost in the past.

the aims of education, p. 98

The question of justice to the teachers has very little to do with the case. It is perfectly just to hire a man to perform any legal services under any legal conditions as to times and Salary. No one need accept he post unless he so desires. The sole question is, What sort of conditions will produce the type of faculty which will run a successful university?

the aims of education, p. 99

the aims of education, p. 1

What education has to impart is an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas, together with a particular body of knowledge which has peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing it.

the aims of education, p. 11

I would only remark that the understanding which we want is an understanding of an insistent present. The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. No more deadly harm can be done to young minds than by depreciating of the present. The present contains all that there is.

the aims of education, p. 2

It was a mistake, as the Hebrews tried, to conceive of God as creating the world from the outside, at one go. An all-foreseeing Creator, who could have made the world as we find it now—what could we think of such a being? Foreseeing everything and yet putting into it all sorts of imperfections to redeem which it was necessary to send his only son into the world to suffer torture and hideous death; outrageous ideas. The Hellenic religion was a better approach; the Greeks conceived of creation as going on everywhere all the time within the universe; and I also think they were happier in their conception of supernatural beings impersonating those various forces, some good, others bad; for both sorts of forces are present, whether we assign personality to them or not. There is a general tendency in the universe to produce worth-while things, and moments come when we can work with it and it can work through us. But the tendency in the universe to produce worth-while things is by no means omnipotent. Other forces work against it.

God is in the world, or nowhere, creating continually in us and around us. This creative principle is everywhere. In animate and so-called in-animate matter, in the ether, water, earth, human hearts. But this creation is a continuing process, and ‘the process is itself the actuality,’ since no sooner do you arrive than you start fresh on a journey. In so far as man partakes of this creative process does he partake of the divine, of God, and that participation is his immortality, reducing the question of whether his individuality survives death of the body to the estate of an irrelevancy. His true destiny as co-creator in the universe is his dignity and his grandeur.

dialogues of alfred north whitehead, p. 296

The progress of civilization is not wholly a uniform drift towards better things. It may perhaps wear this aspect if we map it on a scale which is large enough. But such broad views obscure the details on which rests our whole understanding of the process.

Science and the Modern World, p. 1

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, p. 4

Faith in reason is the trust that the ultimate natures of things lie together in a harmony which excludes mere arbitrariness. It is the faith that at the base of things we shall not find mere arbitrary mystery. The faith in the order of nature which has made possible the grown of science is a particular example of a deeper faith. This faith cannot be justified by any inductive generalisation.

Science and the Modern World, p. 18

The common sense of the eighteenth century, its grasp of the obvious facts of human suffering, and of the obvious demands of human nature, acted on the world like a bath of moral cleansing. Voltaire must have the credit, that he hated injustice, he hated cruelty, he hated senseless repression, and he hated hocus-pocus. Furthermore, when he saw them, he knew them. In these supreme virtues, he was typical of his century, on its better side. But if men cannot live on bread alone, still less can they do so on disinfectants.

Science and the Modern World, p. 59

It should be the chief aim of a university professor to exhibit himself in is own true character—that is, as an ignorant man thinking, actively utilising his small share of knowledge.

the aims of education, p. 37

Whenever I hear, as sometimes I do, one of my colleagues say that there are no ideas which cannot be expressed clearly in simple language, I think, “Then your ideas must be very superficial.”

dialogues with alfred north whitehead, p. 160

Mathematics must be studied; philosophy should be discussed.

dialogues with alfred north whitehead, p. 264

You must allow for the imprecision of language. It is a point I cannot make too emphatic. Again and Again I return to it. The notion that thought can be perfectly or even adequately expressed in verbal symbols is idiotic.

dialogues with alfred north whitehead, p. 264

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of Cf. Note A, what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. (Alfred North Whitehead.

an introduction to mathematics, p. 45

Religion…cannot exist without music. It is too abstract….

Music comes before religion…as emotion comes before thought, and sound before sense. What is the first thing you hear when you go into a church? The organ playing. What is the last thing you hear as you come out? The organ. And in the Catholic service, the mass itself is sung. Music comes aeons before religion. You can’t tell me that the nightingale is singing to his mate out of anything but the joy of life, for the love of singing. These things lie deeper than thought, as sound strikes deeper in us than sight. When we were savages, I venture to suppose, we were much more impressed by the sound of thunder than by the flash of lightning.