Science is a river with two sources, the practical source and the theoretical source.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Some of the finest moral intuitions come to quite humble people. The visiting of lofty ideas doesn't depend on formal schooling. Think of those Galilean peasants.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.

— Alfred North Whitehead

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.

— Alfred North Whitehead

The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal and no liberal education which is not technical.

— Alfred North Whitehead

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

— Alfred North Whitehead

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.

— Alfred North Whitehead

The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism founded upon appreciation of beauty and of intellectual distinction and of duty.

— Alfred North Whitehead

The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.

— Alfred North Whitehead