Alfred North Whitehead Quotes (106 Quotes)

Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

The history of Western philosophy is, after all, no more than a series of footnotes to Plato's philosophy.

'Necessity is the mother of invention' is a silly proverb. 'Necessity is the mother of futile dodges' is much nearer the truth.

There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this greatest science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.

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

The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

There is no nature at an instant.

It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

It is the essence of life that it exists for its own sake.

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.

Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.

A general definition of civilization a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That's not me.

Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.

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

But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a 'nexus' and of a 'proposition'. The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat.

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.

In many circumstances, the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.

Value is coextensive with reality.

Education with inert ideas is not only useless it is above all things harmful.

If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.

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

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.

Common sense is genius in homespun.

Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language. It is essentially a written language, and it endeavors to exemplify in its written structures the patterns which it is its purpose to convey. The pattern of the marks on paper is a particular instance of the pattern to be conveyed to thought. The algebraic method is our best approach to the expression of necessity, by reason of its reduction of accident to the ghostlike character of the real variable.

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is thepast, and it is the future.

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

The major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.

Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings.

There is a technique, a knack, for thinking, just as there is for doing other things. You are not wholly at the mercy of your thoughts, any more than they are you. They are a machine you can learn to operate.

It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent. It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many. It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently. It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World. It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God. It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God.

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and, in effect, increases the mental power of the race.

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.

No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram. A reference to the death of Archimedes.

Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them.

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.

The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.