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
Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Symbolism is an essential aspect of human existence and not just a trivial concept.
In this quote, Alfred North Whitehead emphasizes that symbolism is a fundamental part of human life, shaping our understanding and experiences. He suggests that rather than being a superficial or corrupt idea, symbolism is deeply woven into the fabric of our reality, impacting how we interpret the world around us and communicate our thoughts and feelings.
Themes
SymbolismHuman LifePhilosophyArtMeaning
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of art in culture, one might use this quote to highlight the role of symbolism.
More from Alfred North Whitehead
All quotes βThe 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.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
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.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
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
Similar quotes
The myth of unending consumption has taken the place of the belief in life everlasting.
Ivan IllichRead
When tradition is thought to state the way things really are, it becomes the director and judge of our lives; we are, in effect, imprisoned by it. On the other hand, tradition can be understood as a pointer to that which is beyond tradition: the sacred. Then it functions not as a prison but as a lens.
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Every Christian is important - important to God, to the world, and to the kingdom.
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The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralize about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.
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Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.
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