Alfred North Whitehead quotes

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. (Alfred North Whitehead)
Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
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. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Seek simplicity, then distrust. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
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. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. (Alfred North Whitehead)
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. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
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. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
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. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
We think in generalities, but we live in detail. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
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. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
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. (Alfred North Whitehead)
The science of pure mathematics ... may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
A general definition of civilization a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead