Quotes from Alfred North Whitehead

I always feel that I have two duties to perform with a parting guest: one, to see that he doesn't forget anything that is his; the other, to see that he doesn't take anything that is mine.

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.

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

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.

The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.

Learning is often spoken of as if we are watching the open pages of all the books which we have ever read, and then, when occasion arises, we select the right page to read aloud to the universe.

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.

A clash of doctrines is not a disaster--it is an opportunity.

Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.

Beware the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking.

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

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.

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

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

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Religion is what a person does in his solitariness.

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 the past, and it is the future.

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.

Through and through the world is infested with quantity. To talk sense is to talk quantities, It is no use saying the nation is large- how large? It is no use s aying that radium is scarce- how scarce? You can not evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

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