Alfred North Whitehead

Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.

No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover.

It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately destroy the instincts; but until this has occurred, words do not count.

Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.

The 'silly question' is the first intimation of some totally novel development.

Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose.

The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty... The type of Truth required for the final stretch of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation... Apart from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad... Truth matters because of beauty.

The foundations of the world are to be found, not in the cognitive experience of conscious thought, but in the aesthetic experience of everyday life.

Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ... The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past.

The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.

The fixed person for the fixed duties who in older societies was such a godsend, in future will be a public danger.

Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.

There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.

The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation 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.''

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

Apart from God every activity is merely a passing whiff of insignificance.

It is the business of future to be dangerous.... The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well.

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

Error is the price we pay for progress.