Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.
Alfred North Whitehead

The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.
Alfred North Whitehead

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead

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

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
Alfred North Whitehead

The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.
Alfred North Whitehead

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.
Alfred North Whitehead

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

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.
Alfred North Whitehead

There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.
Alfred North Whitehead

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
Alfred North Whitehead

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
Alfred North Whitehead

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.
Alfred North Whitehead

When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.
Alfred North Whitehead

Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.
Alfred North Whitehead

Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
Alfred North Whitehead