Alfred North Whitehead quotes:

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

The vastest knowledge of today cannot transcend the buddhi of the Rishis in ancient India; and science in its most advanced stage now is closer to Vedanta than ever before.

Dogmatism is the anti-Christ of learning.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.

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

Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose.

"One and one make two" assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstance are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change.

The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.

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

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

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

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

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.

Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.

The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus .

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.

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.

No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.

In England if something goes wrong--say, if one finds a skunk in the garden--he writes to the family solicitor, who proceeds to take the proper measures; whereas in America, you telephone the fire department. Each satisfies a characteristic need; in the English, love of order and legalistic procedure; and here in America, what you like is something vivid, and red, and swift.

On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.

...the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.

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

A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.

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.

It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present society .

Great people plant trees they'll never sit under.

There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.

In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

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.

The only justification in the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary to be used.

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.

Every really new idea looks crazy at first.

The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.

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

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.

But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a 'nexus' and of a 'proposition'. The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat. Process and Reality

Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.

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

The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.

It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience...

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

There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes the philosophy of the epoch.

The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in detail is admitted; fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure.

Systems, scientific or philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.

You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.

The purpose of education is not to fill a vessel but to kindle a flame.

The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad... Truth matters because of beauty.

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion. Our brains merely register and act upon what is telegraphed to them by our bodily experience. Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

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

One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering

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

Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.

My criticism of Hegel procedure is that when in his discussion he arrives at a contradiction, he construes it as a crisis in the universe.

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, 'Seek simplicity and distrust it.

All of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato.

In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed.

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment...

The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.

Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.

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

The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.

Spoken language is merely a series of squeaks.

The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.

As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.

Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.

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

But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing.

Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has conceived.

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

It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.

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.

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

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

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

Common sense is genius in homespun.

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

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

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

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

From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery.

God is in the world, or nowhere, creating continually in us and around us. Insofar as man partakes of this creative process does he partake of the divine, of God, and that participation is his immortality ....