Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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 ....

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

How the past perishes is how the future becomes.

Every really new idea looks crazy at first.

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

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

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

We cannot think first and act afterward. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.

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.

A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.

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

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

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

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

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

Religion is what a person does in his solitariness.

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

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

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

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

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.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

Common sense is genius in homespun.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

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.

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.