Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

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

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into th...

The solution which I am urging is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the v...

The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless w...

[Beware of] the fallacy of misplaced concreteness [mistaking an abstraction for concrete reality, fo...

Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people...

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the sta...

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

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

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

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it that is clear...

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

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

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

Let me here remind you that the essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the so...

It is the business of the future to be dangerous and it is among the merits of science that it equip...

A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.

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

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

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

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it ...

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

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.

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

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

We think in generalities but we live in detail.

Every organism requires an environment of friends partly to shield it from violent changes and par...

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 th...

Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.

Routine is the god of every social system it is the seventh heaven of business the essential compo...

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

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

The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized mod...

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

Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness.

The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of cr...

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

Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.Unlimited possibility and abstract creati...

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

Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labou...

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

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.

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

It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.

Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.

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

A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what ma...

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

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

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

Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't...

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

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

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detai...

God is in the world or nowhere creating continually in us and around us. Insofar as man partakes o...

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

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

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idea...

How the past perishes is how the future becomes.

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

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

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

The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete su...

Wisdom is the fruit of a balanced development.

The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate t...

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

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

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