Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

The “silly” question is the first intimation of some totally new development.

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.

Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.

The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations.

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.

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.

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

A man of science doesn’t discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover.

Common sense is genius in homespun.