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
As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that strictly following moral teachings from the Gospels can be perilous in our current societal context.
Alfred North Whitehead's quote reflects the tension between ideal moral principles found in the Gospels and the realities of modern society. It implies that following these principles literally could lead to dire consequences, implying a critique of how society interprets and reacts to these moral teachings in practical life. This speaks to the complex relationship between ethics, societal norms, and the potential risks of living by high moral standards.
Themes
MoralitySocietyGospelsEthicsConsequences
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the relevance of religious teachings in modern ethical dilemmas.
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
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
The progress of Science consists in observing interconnections and in showing with a patient ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of a few general relations, called laws. To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
Similar quotes
Liberty cannot be guaranteed by law. Nor by any thing else except the resolution of free citizens to defend their liberties.
Edward AbbeyRead
Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.
C. S. LewisRead
Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different. I was thinking of using as a motto for my book a quotation from King Lear: 'I’ll teach you differences'. ... 'You’d be surprised' wouldn’t be a bad motto either.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
Sin, also for those who don't have faith, exists when one goes against one's conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.
Pope FrancisRead
Everything happens kind of the way it's supposed to happen, and we just watch it unfold. And you can't control it. Looking back, you can't say, "I should've..." You didn't, and had you, the outcome would have been different.
Rick RubinRead
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
J. Robert OppenheimerRead