Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

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.

Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.

The essence of education is that it be religious. Pray, what is religious education? A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And 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.

We think in generalities, but we live in details.

There is a greatness in the lives of those who build up religious systems, a greatness in action, in idea and in self-subordination, embodied in instance after instance through centuries of growth. There is a greatness in the rebels who destroy such systems: they are the Titans who storm heaven, armed with passionate sincerity. It may be that the revolt is the mere assertion by youth of its right to its proper brilliance, to that final good of immediate joy. Philosophy may not neglect the multifariousness of the world — the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross.

It is no paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

Life is an offensive directed against the repetitious mechanism of the universe.

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.

In some measure or other, progress is always a transcendence of what is obvious.

"Faraday was asked: "What is the use of this discovery?"
He answered: "What is the use of a child - it grows to be a man.

It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

There are deeper types of symbolism, in a sense artificial, and yet such that we could not get on without them. Language, written or spoken, is such a symbolism.

A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content.

The word “experience” is one of the most deceitful in philosophy. Its adequate discussion would be the topic for a treatise. I can only indicate those elements in my analysis of it which are relevant to the present train of thought.