Alfred North Whitehead
Life is the enjoyment of emotion, derived from the past and aimed at the future.Collection: Life
Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.Collection: Truth
In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your heroism, not all your social charm, not all your wit, not all your victories on land or at sea, can move back the finger of fate. To-day we maintain ourselves. To-morrow science will have moved forward yet one more step, and there will be no appeal from the judgment which will then be pronounced on the uneducated.Collection: Education
The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.Collection: Religious
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.Collection: Stars
A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.Collection: Science
Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.Collection: Reality
Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ... The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past.Collection: Adventure
By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.Collection: Learning
Seek simplicity, then distrust.Collection: Simplicity
Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment.Collection: Art
The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.Collection: Men
Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.Collection: Extravagance
The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.Collection: Race
There is no nature at an instant.Collection: Nature
The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations.Collection: Imagination
Fertilization of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art.Collection: Art
Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.Collection: Expression
Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.Collection: Running
Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.Collection: Motivation
I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.Collection: Beauty
Nobody has a right to speak more clearly than he thinks.Collection: Thinking
Learning preserves the errors of the past as well as its wisdom.Collection: Learning
The future belongs to those who can rise above the confines of the earth.Collection: Earth
Knowledge keeps no better than fish.Collection: Fishes
Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.Collection: Interesting
Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants.Collection: Friendship
Do not teach too many subjects and what you teach, teach thoroughly.Collection: Teach
Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.Collection: Adventure
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.Collection: Philosophical
Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.Collection: Song
I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That’s not me.Collection: Boss