1861-1947, British Mathematician, Philosopher
An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Experience]
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Arts and Artists]
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 – [Destiny]
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Thoughts and Thinking]
Common sense is genius in homespun.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Common Sense]
Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Philosophers and Philosophy]
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Quotations]
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 – [Familiarity]
Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Ideas]
Ideas won't keep, something must be done about them.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Action]
In every age of well-marked transition, there is the pattern of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing and there is oncoming a new complex of habit.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Habit]
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Intelligence and Intellectuals]
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Life and Living]
Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Action]
Philosophy is the product of wonder.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Philosophers and Philosophy]
Seek simplicity but distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Simplicity]
Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Common Sense]
Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Speech]
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Progress]
The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
Alfred North Whitehead – [Youth]