Alfred North Whitehead

"Every human has a natural instinct for growth and self-improvement."

"The price of civilization is the systematic organization of intelligence."

"Human effort is continuously directed toward the acquisition of knowledge and understanding."

"Perfection is a state of mind, not of physical reality."

"The universe is a creative process of actualization of all that is possible."

"The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be."

"Seek simplicity, and distrust it."

"The purpose of education is not to fill a bucket, but to light a fire within the mind."

"Art is the imitation of nature in her manner of operation."

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

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

"There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths."

"In the real world, it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true."

"The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment."

"Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness."

"Nature is alive and is always calling for a response."

"The human spirit needs actual beauty more than it needs bread."

"Life is an adventure, or it is nothing at all."

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

"Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to remedy them."

"Fools act on imagination without knowledge; pedants act on knowledge without imagination."

"The measure of civilization is the measure of compassion."

"Expand your horizons or your enemies will contract them for you."

"Every new idea evokes three reactions: it's impossible; it's possible but worthless; I said it first."

"The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life."

"How can we expect our pupils to become creative and interested individuals if we force them to adopt a mold?"

"The science produced by the modern world has developed a finely sensed perception of beauty."

"There is a quality of life which lies beyond mere survival."

"War is a conflict between competing interests; peace is a state of reconciliation."

"The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself all that is real."