A civilized society is one that exhibits the five qualities of truth beauty adventure art and peace.

— Alfred North Whitehead

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.

— Alfred North Whitehead

A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

— Alfred North Whitehead

A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.

— Alfred North Whitehead

A student should not be taught more than he can think about.

— Alfred North Whitehead

[Beware of] the fallacy of misplaced concreteness [mistaking an abstraction for concrete reality, for actuality] In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence. Error is the price we pay for progress. In the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest. Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe distinctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctive. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity. The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations 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." It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.[From various of Whitehead's books, not only PR]

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

Education with inert ideas is not only useless it is above all things harmful.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Every organism requires an environment of friends partly to shield it from violent changes and partly to supply it with its wants.

— Alfred North Whitehead