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
The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Universities shape the future through rational thinking and appreciation of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead emphasizes that the primary role of a university is to innovate and develop the future through critical thinking and cultured understanding. He suggests that the advancement of society relies on the ability to reason and appreciate various aspects of knowledge and culture, which universities must foster in their students.
Themes
UniversityEducationFutureRational ThoughtCivilization
In practice
Example use cases
In a graduation speech, one might quote this to inspire students about their future.
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
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