Alfred North Whitehead

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography.

It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.

The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence; every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.

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.

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings.

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.

Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.

Apart from blunt truth our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.

Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.

But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside; and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided.

In this modern world the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

If a dog jumps in your lap it is because he is fond of you but if a cat does the same thing it is because you lap is warmer.

There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.

A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.

The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.

Every really new idea looks crazy at first.

Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them.

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.

Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.

The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.

If a dog jumps in your lap it is because he is fond of you but if a cat does the same thing it is because your lap is warmer.

It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.

Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.

I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought than an attitude of irritated party spirit.

Common sense is genius in homespun.

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

A general definition of civilization a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth beauty adventure art peace.

I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That's not me.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.

An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.

Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.

When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.

The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.

Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.

No one who achieves success does so without the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.

Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise.

Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.

What we perceive as the present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation.

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.