Each human being is a more complex structure than any social system to which he belongs.
Alfred North WhiteheadThe art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North WhiteheadThe tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations.
Alfred North WhiteheadAll practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
Alfred North WhiteheadCivilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
Alfred North WhiteheadThe worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternatives, the better and the worse. Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilization there is always an element of unrest.
Alfred North Whitehead