Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.

The term many presupposes the term one , and the term one presupposes the term many.

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

Wisdom is the fruit of a balanced development.

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

A student should not be taught more than he can think about.

Get your knowledge quickly and then use it. If you can use it you will retain it.

Science is a river with two sources, the practical source and the theoretical source.

Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness.

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

From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.

A civilized society is one that exhibits the five qualities of truth beauty adventure art and peace.

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

The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism founded upon appreciation of beauty and of intellectual distinction and of duty.

Education with inert ideas is not only useless it is above all things harmful.

The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal and no liberal education which is not technical.

Every organism requires an environment of friends partly to shield it from violent changes and partly to supply it with its wants.

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

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

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

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

Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling. Think of those Galilean peasants.

Life is an offensive directed against the repetitious mechanism of the universe.

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

We think in generalities but we live in detail.

The major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

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

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.

The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is the past and it is the future.

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

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.

A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied he is content.

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.

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