All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of idealistic motives in shaping great historical periods, suggesting that neglecting them leads to negative consequences.
Alfred North Whitehead argues that throughout history, greatness has always been linked to noble and idealistic motivations. He warns that in contemporary times, a disregard for these high ideals has occurred, and the adverse outcomes we experience today are the direct result of this neglect. The quote serves as a reminder of the necessity of ideals in driving progress and ensuring a meaningful existence.
Themes
IdealismHistoryMotivesConsequencesGreatness
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the importance of values in leadership.
More from Alfred North Whitehead
All quotes →The vitality of thought is in adventure. Idea's won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervour, live for it, and, if need be, die for it. Their inheritors receive the idea, perhaps now strong and successful, but without inheriting the fervour; so the idea settles down to a comfortable middle age, turns senile, and dies.
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The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
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As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
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I consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race... It would be impossible to imagine anything more un - Christianlike than theology.
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Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much closer to the truth. The basis of growth of modern invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
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