Quotes By Alfred North Whitehead

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

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

Common sense is genius in homespun.

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

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.

Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

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

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.

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

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.

Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.

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

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

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.

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

It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.

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

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

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

Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

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.

Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.