10 Alfred North Whitehead Quotes on Knowledge

Alfred North Whitehead quotes on knowledge

19. Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.

20. For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.

21. The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.

23. That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.

24. The universities are schools of education, and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty. Both these functions could be performed at a cheaper rate, apart from these very expensive institutions. Books are cheap, and the system of apprenticeship is well understood. So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularisation of printing in the fifteenth century. Yet the chief impetus to the foundation of universities came after that date, and in more recent times has even increased. 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.

59. A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.

64. Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.

71. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

74. 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

75. Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.