Alfred North Whitehead

A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full …

A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.

The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

The deliberate aim at Peace very easily passes into its bastard substitute, Anesthesia.

Systems, scientific and philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as if it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer …

Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.

The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The …

No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.

For the kingdom of heaven is with us today.

Whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification.

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

Error is the price we pay for progress.

In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only …

A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.

There is nothing in the real world which is merely an inert fact. Every reality is there for feeling: it promotes feeling; and it is felt.

Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; … But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.

The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption …

Philosophy may not neglect the multifariousness of the world — the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross.

The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.

The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying …

Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization …