Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Philosophy is the product of wonder. The effort after the general characterization of the world around us is the romance of human… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has conceived. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
“The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements; ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes… — 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
Systems, scientific or philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
“But the purpose of philosophy is to rationalize mysticism: not by explaining it away, but by the introduction of novel verbal characterizations,… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
“Philosophers can never hope finally to formulate these metaphysical first principles. Weakness of insight and deficiencies of language stand in the way… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking… — 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
