Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

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

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

I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning , or destroyed it altogether.

If a dog jumps in 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.

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

Seek simplicity, and distrust it.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change.

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

The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial... he cannot go along with currents and trends.

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

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

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

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

The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.

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