Quote #10

All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts': all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles.

More from Alfred North Whitehead

  1. Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuit…
  2. The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.
  3. It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultiva…
  4. The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.
  5. The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of mole…
  6. Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the …
  7. He gave them speech, and they became souls.
  8. Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God. The presentation of God under the aspect of power awakens every modern inst…

All Alfred North Whitehead quotes