Alfred Whitehead

The many become one, and are increased by one.

It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization.  But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory.

The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.

Value is coextensive with reality.

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

The major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.

Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim.   Wisdom the source of virtue, and of fame,  Obtained with labor, for mankind employed,  And then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.

To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor of a more concrete element of nature.