29 Quotes By Alfred North Whitehead


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.
Alfred North Whitehead on alone

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.
Alfred North Whitehead on art

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
Alfred North Whitehead on best

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.
Alfred North Whitehead on business

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead on change

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

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead on death

An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.
Alfred North Whitehead on experience

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
Alfred North Whitehead on experience

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.
Alfred North Whitehead on future

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.
Alfred North Whitehead on future

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.
Alfred North Whitehead on history

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

Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.
Alfred North Whitehead on imagination

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

It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead on intelligence

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.
Alfred North Whitehead on knowledge

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead on knowledge

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.
Alfred North Whitehead on knowledge

Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.
Alfred North Whitehead on knowledge