Alfred North Whitehead quotes
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of "artistic" expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.
An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
But you can catch yourself entertaining habitually certain ideas and setting others aside; and that, I think, is where our personal destinies are largely decided.
Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.
Common sense is genius in homespun.
Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.
I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That's not me.
Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them.
If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
In every age of well-marked transition, there is the pattern of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing and there is oncoming a new complex of habit.
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
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.
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.
"Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth.
No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.
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.
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.
Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
Philosophy is the product of wonder.
Seek simplicity but distrust it.
Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.
Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
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.
There is a self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
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.
When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.
Without adventure civilization is in full decay.