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. – Alfred North Whitehead
I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That’s not me. – Alfred North Whitehead
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it. – Alfred North Whitehead
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe. – Alfred North Whitehead
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. – Alfred North Whitehead
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. – Alfred North Whitehead
Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination. – Alfred North Whitehead
Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. – Alfred North Whitehead
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
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
Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language. – Alfred North Whitehead
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself. – Alfred North Whitehead
The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it. – Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. – Alfred North Whitehead
Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language. – Alfred North Whitehead
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. – Alfred North Whitehead
Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced. – Alfred North Whitehead
Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up. – Alfred North Whitehead
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
Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning. – Alfred North Whitehead
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. – Alfred North Whitehead
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
