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 foundations of the world are to be found, not in the cognitive experience of conscious thought, but in the aesthetic experience of everyday life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True understanding of existence comes from appreciating everyday beauty rather than just rational thought.
Alfred North Whitehead emphasizes that the true essence of the world is rooted in our aesthetic experiences—the daily beauty we encounter—rather than solely in our rational or cognitive thoughts. This perspective invites us to recognize the richness of life through our senses and emotions, suggesting that deeper truths are often found in the simple, everyday moments rather than in abstract reasoning.
Themes
AestheticExperienceBeautyLifeThought
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the importance of appreciating daily life, one could reference this quote to emphasize its beauty.
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.
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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Things themselves do not remain, but their effects do. Therefore we should not be mean and calculating with what we have but give with a generous hand. Look at how much people give to players and dancers-why not give just as much to Christ?
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To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?'
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Without an observer at a twenty three degree angle to the light being reflected off a cloud of spherical droplets, there is no rainbow. The whole universe is like that. Our spirits stand at a twenty three degree angle to the universe. There is some new thing created at the contact of photon and retina, some space created between rock and mind.
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