Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Education with inert ideas is not only useless; it is above all things harmful. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumed with… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The importance of an individual thinker owes something to chance. For it depends upon the fate of his ideas in the minds… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside; and that, I think, is where our personal destinies… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information.… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas' - that is to say, ideas that are… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
In a living civilization there is always an element of unrest, for sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order survives… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Idea's won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. . . . Civilisation is the maintenance of social order, by its… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternatives,… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty in our present… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of infinitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share
