Whitehead, Alfred North

"The aim of science is not prediction, but understanding."

"All science is concerned with the search for order."

"To think is to be alive."

"Perfection is the absence of vagueness."

"The real tragedy of modern life is not the absence of religion, but the absence of adventure."

"Gratitude is the memory of the heart."

"The only concrete fact of experience is that something takes place; that there is activity which is productive of effects; and that there is a passage of time."

"Civilizations advance when they recognize the importance of both reason and imagination."

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

"A philosopher's ultimate aim is to construct a coherent, logical system that accounts for the apparent facts of experience."

"Beauty is the aim of creation; all true greatness is beautiful."

"The alternative to tragedy is not happiness, but triviality."

"Humans are not the measure of all things. The universe is infinitely more complex than we imagine."

"An adventure is the immediate emergence of novelty."

"The growth of understanding is the ascent from blind feeling to intellectual discrimination."

"Technology is a means, not an end. The end is human flourishing."

"Every event in the world is determined by how it is prehended, or felt, by other entities."

"Civilization requires the leisure to think, and thought requires civilization to protect it."

"The past is always emerging into the future, and consciousness emerges from this creative advance."

"We cannot live only by intellect; we must engage with the world through feeling and intuition."

"Freedom is the opportunity to act in accordance with one's nature."

"Speculative philosophy is the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas."

"The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts with run and takes off."

"Abstractness is the glory of the human mind; it is also the source of human error."

"Wars are fought over the control of symbols, not the control of things."

"Each occasion arises from an interplay between novelty and conformity."

"The greatest inventions come not from pure intellect, but from the marriage of thought and intuition."

"To understand the world, we must understand both its stability and its flux."

"No two people experience the same reality; each brings their own prehension to events."

"The purpose of education is not to impart information, but to develop the power of thought."