Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.
Alfred North WhiteheadEverything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
Alfred North WhiteheadThe whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning.
Alfred North WhiteheadNow in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.
Alfred North WhiteheadWithout deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.
Alfred North Whitehead