Alfred North Whitehead May Quotations

You may not divide the seamless coat of learning,

The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir

You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.

It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately destroy the instincts; but until this has occurred, words do not count.

You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.

If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced, and almost any idea which jogs you out of your current abstractions may be better than nothing.

It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.

Error itself may be happy chance.

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.