Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly… — 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 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
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 Image
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
