"Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth.
All centuries are dangerous; it is the business of the future to be dangerous. It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been the unstable ages.
Alle Wahrheiten sind Halbwahrheiten. Sie als volle Wahrheiten zu behandeln heißt den Teufel spielen.
An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it.
Aristoteles erfand die Wissenschaft, aber zerstörte die Philosophie.
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.
As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
Daß die Bibel keine Spur von Humor enthält, ist eine der merkwürdigsten Tatsachen der ganzen Literatur.
Das Lernen enthält die Irrtümer der Vergangenheit wie auch ihre Weisheiten.
Der erste Mensch, der die Analogie zwischen einer Gruppe von sieben Fischen und einer Gruppe von sieben Tagen feststellte, machte einen bedeutenden Fortschritt in der Geschichte des Denkens.
Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parents. It may assent to them, but it brings them out into the open.
Eine Wissenschaft, die zögert, ihre Gründer zu vergessen, ist verloren.
Es ist mir nicht um der Wahrheit wegen um die Wahrheit zu tun, sondern meinetwegen.
Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants.
Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Ideen halten sich nicht. Es muß etwas mit ihnen getan werden.
If a dog jumps in 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.
If you have had your attention directed to the novelties of thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain spect of foolishnes when they are first produced, and almost any idea which jogs you out of your current abstractions may be better than nothing.
In the history of the world the prize has not gone to those species which specialized in methods of violence, or even in defensive armor. In fact, nature began with producing animals encased in hard shells for defense against the ills of life. It also experimented in size. But smaller animals, without external armor, warm-blooded, sensitive, alert, have cleared those monsters off the face of the earth.
In the past, human life was lived in a bullock cart; in the future, it will be lived in an aeroplane; and the change of speed amounts to a difference in quality.
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.
It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the universe.
Dies ist keine vollständige liste der zitate von Alfred-North-Whitehead. Zitate anderer autoren sind ebenfalls verfügbar.
