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“There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Prologue.
Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)

“The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 349.

“The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. V, ch. II, sec. V.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song, and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.”

Alfred North Whitehead

as cited in History, Humanity and Evolution (1989), p. 383.
1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“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.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.

“Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)

“Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God. The presentation of God under the aspect of power awakens every modern instinct of critical reaction. This is fatal; for religion collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent. In this respect the old phraseology is at variance with the psychology of modern civilisations. This change in psychology is largely due to science, and is one of the chief ways in which the advance of science has weakened the hold of the old religious forms of expression.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), p. 135; Ch. 17, December 15, 1939.

“The ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. I, ch. 2, sec. 2.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must beware of what I will call "inert ideas"—that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.
In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful—Corruptio optimi, pessima”

Alfred North Whitehead

the corruption of the best is the worst
1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)

“The main importance of Francis Bacon’s influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)

“Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat; but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards victory.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“…We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“The term many presupposes the term one, and the term one presupposes the term many.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. I, ch. 2, sec. 2.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“For the kingdom of heaven is with us today.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“…The modern fading of interest in religion.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

“Error is the price we pay for progress.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 22, August 17, 1941.