Talk:Alfred North Whitehead
Well, there is another quote, attributed to A.N. Whitehead - it appears in Wikipedia under Infinite Monkey Theorem ,the quote being 'I will not go to infinity'. If anyone could verify this quote, it could be added to this page.
Source for expansion
Sourced vs. unsourced
The first two quotes in the "sourced" section ("Unlimited possibility ..." and "There is a quality of life ...") are, in fact, unsourced. Are they supposed to be from the same book as the third quote? I'm moving them to the "unsourced" section. --184.108.40.206 15:47, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
- As it turns out, they are from the same source (Religion in the Making) but appear to have been improperly formatted. I have restored them to the Sourced section and provided links to the texts. - InvisibleSun 16:52, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to Alfred North Whitehead. --Antiquary 17:00, 26 April 2009 (UTC)
- But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside; and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided.
- Common sense is genius in homespun.
- Dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure. The universe is vast.
- I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.
- 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.
- It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
- It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
- Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
- We think in generalities, but we live in details.
- There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly. -P.R. preface
- Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
- The pursuit of philosophy is the one avocation denied to omniscience.