46 quotes
English mathematician and philosopher (1861–1947)
“Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains.”
"Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness."
on Faith
"We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities."
on Knowledge
"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order."
on Philosophy
"Not ignorance but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge."
"Life is an offensive directed against the repetitious mechanism of the universe."
on Life
"It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious."
on Critical Thinking
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous."
"The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground for it is the past and it is the future."
on Time
"There are no whole truths. All truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil."
on Truth
"Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge."
on Wisdom
"Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended."
"In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory."
"Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination."
"The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things."
on Emotion
"The "silly" question is the first intimation of some totally new development"
"From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought."
"True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes but the firm resolve of virtue and reason."
on Courage
"Education with inert ideas is not only useless it is above all things harmful."
on Education
"Every organism requires an environment of friends partly to shield it from violent changes and partly to supply it with its wants."
on Community
"Fools act on imagination without knowledge pedants act on knowledge without imagination."
