412 Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

The purpose of education is not to fill a vessel but to kindle a flame.

Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.

The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.

Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications.

The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.

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

Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.

There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.