Alfred North WhiteheadThinkers

Ability is capacity to act wisely on a thing apprehended whereas intelligence is quickness to apprehend.

Adaptation is a process which is reversed today... namely, animals have progressively undertaken the task of adapting the environment to themselves, modifying it (by building homes, damming rivers).

Adaptation is a reverse trend of what it used to be such that animals have progressively undertaken the task of adapting the environment to themselves.

Aesthetics is a non-anthropocentric concept of feeling. The basic condition of experience which all experience, including science emerges out from.

Cartesianism is wrongheadedly based on the implicit assumption that the mind can only know that which it has itself produced and retains in some sense within itself.

The Cat is an animal which if it jumps into your lap, unlike the dog who does so because it is fond of you, does so because your lap is warmer.

A Civilization is that which can only be understood by those who are civilized.

A Contradiction is, in logic, the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.

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

Death is the art of persistence. Life, by contrast, is comparatively deficient in survival value.

The Dictionary is a public danger and also a necessity, for learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom.