15 quotes
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment in recognition of the pattern.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
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.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
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.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of the infinitude.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
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.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.
Attributed Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)