Q0350

Alfred North Whitehead

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Thinker Alfred North Whitehead
School Process philosophy
Source Process and Reality
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Process and Reality, within the tradition of Process philosophy. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Alfred North Whitehead's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Alfred North Whitehead. (n.d.). The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0350

MLA: Alfred North Whitehead. “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0350.

Chicago: Alfred North Whitehead. “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0350.

Same thinker

More from Alfred North Whitehead

  1. The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.
  2. The many become one, and are increased by one.
  3. In the Garden of Eden Adam saw the animals before he named them: in the traditional system, children named the animals before they saw them.
  4. Seek simplicity and distrust it.

All quotations by Alfred North Whitehead

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme