Alfred Whitehead

Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications of definite particular things.

The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.

It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.

We think in generalities, but we live in details.

No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram. A reference to the death of Archimedes.

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and, in effect, increases the mental power of the race.

Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them.

There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.

There is a technique, a knack, for thinking, just as there is for doing other things. You are not wholly at the mercy of your thoughts, any more than they are you. They are a machine you can learn to operate.