Alfred North Whitehead

A clash of doctrine is not a disaster, it is an opportunity.

— Alfred North Whitehead

In all education the main cause of failure is staleness.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Seek simplicity, then distrust.

— Alfred North Whitehead

“A science that hesitates to forget its founders is lost.”

— Alfred North Whitehead

“We think in generalities, but we live in details.”

— Alfred North Whitehead

“Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness.”

— Alfred North Whitehead

Dogmatism is the anti-Christ of learning.

— Alfred North Whitehead

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Learning preserves the errors of the past as well as its wisdom.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Each human being is a more complex structure than any social system to which he belongs.

— Alfred North Whitehead

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts... Seek simplicity and distrust it.

— Alfred North Whitehead

When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the…

— Alfred North Whitehead

Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the…

— Alfred North Whitehead

Peace is self-control at its widest-at the width where the "self" has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider…

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation…

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry…

— Alfred North Whitehead

Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose…

— Alfred North Whitehead

In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows, for details are swallowed up in principles. The details for knowledge which are important,…

— Alfred North Whitehead

In the history of the world the prize has not gone to those species which specialized in methods of violence, or even…

— Alfred North Whitehead

“It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite…

— Alfred North Whitehead

Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and…

— Alfred North Whitehead

Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language. It is essentially a written language, and it endeavors to exemplify…

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Everyone is a philosopher. Not everyone is good at it.

— Alfred North Whitehead

“Wisdom is the fruit of a balanced development.”

— Alfred North Whitehead

A Unitarian is a person who believes in at most one God.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

— Alfred North Whitehead