Author Profile
Alfred North Whitehead
1861 – 1947 • English • Mathematician
57
Total Quotes
Collected Meditations
Showing 57 quotesEvery philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.— Alfred North Whitehead
Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.— Alfred North Whitehead
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.— Alfred North Whitehead
The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.— Alfred North Whitehead
The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.— Alfred North Whitehead
When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.— Alfred North Whitehead
Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.— Alfred North Whitehead
I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That's not me.— Alfred North Whitehead
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
Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.— Alfred North Whitehead
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.— Alfred North Whitehead