412 Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Change’ is the description of the adventures of eternal objects in the evolving universe of actual things.

Science only deals with half the evidence provided by human experience. It divides the seamless coat – or, to change the metaphor into a happier form, it examines the coat, which is superficial, and neglects the body which is fundamental.

Peace is self-control at its widest-at the width where the “self” has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality.

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it.

A philosopher of imposing stature doesn’t think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.

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.

In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.

God is the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of potentiality.

Panic of error is the death of progress, and love of truth is its safeguard.