Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions. — 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
“There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.” — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
"Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people. — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure,… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
“The truth is that science started its modern career by taking over ideas derived from the weakest side of the philosophies of… — Alfred North Whitehead Copy Share Image
“Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice;… — 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
