Whitehead Quotes & Sayings

I was a skinny guy, but I was morbidly obese with doom. — Colson Whitehead

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery. — Alfred North Whitehead

Religion is what a person does in his solitariness. — Alfred North Whitehead

I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way. — Carl Sandburg

So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century. — Alfred North Whitehead

That's how the European tribes operate, she said. If they can't control it, they destroy it. — Colson Whitehead

In a living 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. — Alfred North Whitehead

It builds cathedrals before the workmen have moved a stone, and it destroys them before the elements have worn down their arches. It is the architect of the buildings of the spirit, and it is also their solvent: - and the spiritual precedes the material. — Alfred North Whitehead

If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer. — Alfred North Whitehead

You are a soulless monster whose fright mask is incapable of capturing human expressions. — Colson Whitehead

It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment. — Alfred North Whitehead

God is the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of potentiality. — Alfred North Whitehead

No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes. — Alfred North Whitehead

The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them. — Alfred North Whitehead

Live every minute as if you are late for the last train. — Colson Whitehead

Systems, scientific or philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance. — Alfred North Whitehead

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows. — Alfred North Whitehead

It was nigh impossible to understand Howard's speech under normal circumstances. He favored a pidgin of his lost African tongue and slave talk. In the old days, her mother had told her, that half language was the voice of the plantation. They had been stolen from villages all over Africa and spoke a multitude of tongues. The words from across the ocean were beaten out of them over time. For simplicity, to erase their identities, to smother uprisings. All the words except for the ones locked away by those who still remembered who they had been before. "They keep 'em hid like precious gold," Mabel said. — Colson Whitehead

If you were a thing - a cart or a horse or a slave - your value determined your possibilities. — Colson Whitehead

The true task of education, Alfred North Whitehead cautioned, is to abjure stale knowledge. "Knowledge does not keep any better than fish," he said. We need to keep it alive, vital, potent. — Howard Zinn

In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts. — Alfred North Whitehead

The whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning. — Alfred North Whitehead

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 molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it. — Alfred North Whitehead

It is natural to think that an abstract science cannot be of much importance in affairs of human life, because it has omitted from its consideration everything of real interest. — Alfred North Whitehead

As it often did when I thought about chicken wings and entropy, my mind turned to Emerson. "Life is a journey, not a destination." Now that was one stone-cold motherfucker who was not afraid to deliver the truth: After the torments of the journey, you have been well-prepared for the agonies of the destination. — Colson Whitehead

Resentment was the hinge of her personality. — Colson Whitehead

In other words, fiction is payback for those who have wronged you. — Colson Whitehead

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them. — Colson Whitehead

The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus . — Alfred North Whitehead

I write the books that I'm compelled to and I definitely learn things about the world when I write them, and I hope that other people get something out of them, enjoy them, see the world differently when they're done. — Colson Whitehead

All I truly know is that we rise and fall as one, one colored family living next door to one white family. We may not know the way through the forest, but we can pick each other up when we fall, and we will arrive together." - — Colson Whitehead

Tennessee was cursed. Initially, she assigned the devastation of Tennessee, the blaze and the disease, to justice. The whites got what they deserved for enslaving her people, for massacring another race, for stealing the very land itself. Let them burn by flame or fever, let the destruction started here roll acre by acre until the dead have been avenged. But if people received their just portion of misfortune, what had she done to bring her troubles on herself? — Colson Whitehead

The Four Questions?" "As put forth by Mettleheim: How did this happen? How could this happen? Is it exceptional? How will it be avoided in the future? — Colson Whitehead

You have to stand up real close to the posters to see the swirls, and even then they're easy to miss: Lila Mae had to have Jimmy point them out to her. Horns, boiling cysts, the occasional cussword inked in across Chancre's slat teeth - they add up after a while, somehow more personal and meaningful than the usual cartoons and pinups of office homesteading. — Colson Whitehead

Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced. — Alfred North Whitehead

That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience. — Alfred North Whitehead

He hovered on unexceptionality. — Colson Whitehead

In the history of the world the prize has not gone to those species which specialized in methods of violence, or even in defensive armor. In fact, nature began with producing animals encased in hard shells for defense against the ill of life. But smaller animals, without external armor, warm-blooded, sensitive, alert, have cleared those monsters off the face of the earth. — Alfred North Whitehead

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending. — Colson Whitehead

I was inspired to become a writer by horror movies and science fiction. — Colson Whitehead

You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves. — Alfred North Whitehead

She had not been his and now she was his. Or she had always been his and just now knew it. Cora's attention detached itself. It floated someplace past the burning slave and the great house and the lines that defined the Randall domain. She tried to fill in its details from stories, sifting through the accounts of slaves who had seen it. Each time she caught hold of something - buildings of polished white stone, an ocean so vast that there wasn't a tree in sight, the shop of a colored blacksmith who served no master but himself - it wriggled free like a fish and raced away. She would have to see it for herself if she were to keep it. — Colson Whitehead

Knowledge keeps no better than fish. — Alfred North Whitehead

It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery - Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string of his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry. — Alfred North Whitehead

As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death. — Alfred North Whitehead

There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain. — Alfred North Whitehead

Here's a tip for new parents: Start lowering those expectations early, it's going to pay off later. — Colson Whitehead

Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers for your reinventions. — Colson Whitehead

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe. — Alfred North Whitehead

When success turns a man's head he faces failure — Alfred North Whitehead

The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort. — Alfred North Whitehead

Seek simplicity, and distrust it. — Alfred North Whitehead

Tonight the song you always despised strides from the jukebox full-bodied and you hear the lyrics for the first time, understand the lyrics for the first time after all these years. This new you with an older soul. Now it's your favorite. All this time singing the wrong words. — Colson Whitehead

In keeping with my family's affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Betamax. The year before, we'd bought a TRS-80 instead of an Apple II, and in due course we'd unbox Mattel's Intellivision, instead of Atari's legendary gizmo. This was good training for a writer, for the sooner you accept the fact that you are a deluded idiot who is always out of step with reality the better off you will be. — Colson Whitehead

Common sense is genius in homespun. — Alfred North Whitehead

of a runaway? Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the — Colson Whitehead

Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open. — Alfred North Whitehead

The weak link-- she liked the ring of it. To seek the imperfection in the chain that keeps you in bondage. Taken individually, the link was not much. But in concert with its fellows, a mighty iron that subjugated millions despite its weakness. The people she chose, young and old, from the rich part of town or the more modest streets, did not individually persecute Cora. As a community, they were shackles. If she kept at it, chipping away at weak links wherever she found them, it might add up to something. — Colson Whitehead

In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas. — Alfred North Whitehead

A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace. — Alfred North Whitehead

It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. The tunnel, the tracks, the desperate souls who found salvation in the coordination of its stations and timetables - this was a marvel to be proud of. She wondered if those who had built this thing had received their proper reward. — Colson Whitehead

Weeks passed, but my Word-A-Day Calendar was stuck on motherfucker. — Colson Whitehead

To see chains on another person and be glad they are not your own - such was the good fortune permitted colored people, defined by how much worse it could be any moment. — Colson Whitehead

"One and one make two" assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstance are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change. — Alfred North Whitehead

The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in detail is admitted; fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure. — Alfred North Whitehead

All he felt now was envy. These people had expectations. Of the world, of the future, it didn't matter
expectation was such an innovative concept to him that he couldn't help but be a bit moved by what they were saying. Whatever that was. — Colson Whitehead

The masks had been made in Korea, delivering back to the West the faces they had given the rest of the globe: presidents, screen stars, and mass murderers. The rubber filament inevitably snapped from the staple after five minutes. The graft wouldn't take. — Colson Whitehead

The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals. — Alfred North Whitehead

They were exiles, but Hob provided a type of protection once they settled in. By playing up their strangeness, the way a slave simpered and acted childlike to escape a beating, they evaded the entanglements of the quarter. The walls of Hob made a fortress some nights, rescuing them from the feuds and conspiracies. White men eat you up, but sometimes colored folk eat you up, too. She — Colson Whitehead

Spoiler: I didn't win the Main Event. You had suspicions, you say? For one thing, the subtitle of this book would be "The Amazing Life-Affirming Story of an Unremarkable Jerk Who Won the World Series of Poker!" instead of having the word "Death" in it. For another, do these sound like the words of a motherfucker who won a million goddamn dollars? — Colson Whitehead

This isn't going to un-fuck itself. — Colson Whitehead

Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there and always underfoot, the insistent gray muck that was pop culture. It stuck to our shoes and we tracked it through our lives. — Colson Whitehead

Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close. — Alfred North Whitehead

The doctor was a frequent visitor at Miss Trumball's establishment, preferring it to the Lanchester house, whose girls had a saturnine disposition in his opinion, as if imported from Maine or other gloom-loving provinces. — Colson Whitehead

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil. — Alfred North Whitehead

It's like peanut butter and chocolate. Each is great, but they're better together. — Richard Whitehead

Growing up devouring horror comics and novels, and being inspired to become a writer because of horror novels, movies, and comic books, I always knew I was going to write a horror novel. — Colson Whitehead

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy. — Alfred North Whitehead

War can protect; it cannot create. — Alfred North Whitehead

Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions. — Alfred North Whitehead

Suck it, Entropy. We have an appointment, my old friend, but not today. — Colson Whitehead

The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well dragged. — Colson Whitehead

But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. — Alfred North Whitehead

Hipsters seek refuge in church, Our Lady of Perpetual Subculture. There is some discussion as to whether or not they are still cool but then they are calmed by the obscure location and the arrival of their kind. Keep the address to yourself, let the rabble fund it themselves. Wow, this crappy performance art is really making me feel no so terrible about my various emotional issues. — Colson Whitehead

Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks. — Alfred North Whitehead

When they got to Oklahoma there were still more white people waiting for them, squatting on the land the Indians had been promised in the latest worthless treaty. Slow learners, the bunch. — Colson Whitehead

Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty; so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition; and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system. — Alfred North Whitehead

[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting. — Alfred North Whitehead

Money was new and unpredictable and liked to go where it pleased. Some — Colson Whitehead

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit. — Alfred North Whitehead

Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications. — Alfred North Whitehead

memory has a palette and broad brush. — Colson Whitehead

One day a pickaninny was happy and the next the light was gone from them; in between they had been introduced to a new reality of bondage. — Colson Whitehead

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. — Alfred North Whitehead

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. — Alfred North Whitehead

The I-Remember-Whensters lumbered in with their musty catalogues of the bygone, dragging IVs of distilled nostalgia behind them on creaky wheels, — Colson Whitehead

Our government disdains a risk-reward game that millions of Americans play," Matt wrote, "then bails out Wall Street sharks who bet unfathomable sums. I can only conclude that this contradictory stance has little to do with the skills required for each pursuit. No, for some reason, lawmakers just don't like poker. — Colson Whitehead

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. — Alfred North Whitehead

Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains. — Alfred North Whitehead

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. — Alfred North Whitehead