Alfred North Whitehead

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Religion is what a person does in his solitariness.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Knowledge keeps no better than fish

— Alfred North Whitehead

Philosophy asks the simple question: What is it all about?

— Alfred North Whitehead

Value is coextensive with reality.

— Alfred North Whitehead

“A student should not be taught more than he can think about.”

— Alfred North Whitehead

Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.

— Alfred North Whitehead

No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

— Alfred North Whitehead

The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.

— Alfred North Whitehead

The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise

— Alfred North Whitehead

Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. Thus religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are…

— Alfred North Whitehead

The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications…

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

Democracy...is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only a half dozen unbelievers in America,…

— Alfred North Whitehead

In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is…

— Alfred North Whitehead

Learning is often spoken of as if we are watching the open pages of all the books which we have ever read,…

— Alfred North Whitehead

The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble…

— 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

I am sure that one secret of a successful teacher is that he has formulated quite clearly in his mind what the…

— Alfred North Whitehead

The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of…

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the…

— Alfred North Whitehead

The vigour of civilised societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth while. Vigorous societies harbour a certain…

— Alfred North Whitehead

Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty; so that the massiveness…

— Alfred North Whitehead

Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general,…

— Alfred North Whitehead

A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

— Alfred North Whitehead

There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Problems are only opportunities in disquise.

— Alfred North Whitehead

There is no nature in an instant.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Error itself may be happy chance.

— Alfred North Whitehead

War can protect; it cannot create.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

— Alfred North Whitehead