Alfred North Whitehead

“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.”

“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 study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.”

“Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.”

“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.”

“Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.”

“Common sense is genius in homespun.”

“Let me here remind you that the essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things. This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama. This remorseless inevitableness is what pervades scientific thought. The laws of physics are the decrees of fate.”

“In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed.”

“Without adventure civilization is in full decay.”

“I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.”

“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.”

“The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.”

“Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.”

“When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.”

“מבחינת ההיגיון הפשוט, ניגודים מהווים סימני היכר של כישלון, אבל מבחינת התפתחותו של הידע האמיתי הם מהווים צעדים לקראת הניצחון.”

“גבורה איננה באה על ביטויה בעוצמתם של גיבורים, אלא בהחלטיותם של המידות הטובות ושל ההיגיון.”

“אין בנמצא אמת מוחלטת; כל אמת היא אמת לחצאין. כאשר אנו מנסים להתייחס אליה כשלמה ומושלמת, אנו משחקים לידיו של השטן.”

“מה משמעו של המוסר במקום ובזמן? דעתו של הרוב.”