Quotes from Alfred North Whitehead

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

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

The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence; every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.

We think in generalities, but we live in details.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains.

the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, 'Seek simplicity and distrust it.

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

Error is the price we pay for progress.

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

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

Every really new idea looks crazy at first.

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat; but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory.

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

It is a profoundly erroneous truism that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.

Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.

The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.

We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only guide it by taking thought.

The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.

Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected.

The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.

The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.

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.