Home The Mine of Useless Information - everything you never needed to know!

Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

Showing page 1 of 2

1 2 Next »


"If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer."

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

"Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge."

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
Technology

"One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering."

"Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice."

"When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top."

"No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude."

"I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That's not me."

"Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self."

"Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself."

"Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of "artistic" expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb."

"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."

"Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up."

"Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them."

"It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties."

"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."

"There is a self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge."

""Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth."

"We think in generalities, but we live in detail."

© 2006 The Mine of Useless Information