Quotes from Alfred North Whitehead

The foundations of the world are to be found, not in the cognitive experience of conscious thought, but in the aesthetic experience of everyday life.

It is natural to think that an abstract science cannot be of much importance in affairs of human life, because it has omitted from its consideration everything of real interest.

The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.

Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.

Youth is life as yet unblemished by much tragedy, but hardly by TV.

Common sense is genius in homespun.

A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.

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

A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.

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

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

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

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

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

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.

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.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

Great people plant trees they'll never sit under.

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

Seek simplicity but distrust it.

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

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

I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.