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Alfred North Whitehead [1861-1947] English

Alfred North Whitehead OM FRS was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas.

Knowledge, Art, Intelligence, Wisdom, Alone, Change, Courage, Death, Experience, History, Humor, Imagination, Pet, Success, Technology, Thankful

Quote	Tags	Rank
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.	Art	101
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.	Art, Experience	102
But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside; and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided.		103
The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.		104
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.	Pet	105
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.	Courage	106
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.	Death, Knowledge	107
No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.	Success, Thankful	108
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.	History	109
Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.		110
Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.		111
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.	Art, Change	112
It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.	Intelligence	113
The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.		114
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.	Knowledge	115
Seek simplicity but distrust it.		116
When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.		117
Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.		118
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.	Intelligence	119
Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.	Alone, Wisdom	120
I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.		121
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.	Technology	122
Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.		123
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.		124
Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.		125
Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.	Imagination, Knowledge	126
Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.	Knowledge, Wisdom	201
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.		202
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.		203
Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.		204
Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.		205
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.		206
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.		207
It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.		208
I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That's not me.		209
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.		210
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.		211
Without adventure civilization is in full decay.		212
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.		213
Common sense is genius in homespun.		214
Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.		215
Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.		216
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.		217
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.		218
Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.		219
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.		220
Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.		221
The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.	Humor	222
I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.		223
There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.		224
The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.		225
Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them.		226
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.		301
An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.		302
Philosophy is the product of wonder.		303
Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.		304
The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.		305

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