Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much closer to the truth. The basis of growth of modern invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.

It is always well to get near to men of genius.

Ideas come from everywhere - they come from what you see and hear and imagine.

A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think something else.

Original thinking migrates each day in search of nourishment.

I have been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things; and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very clever - much cleverer than the discoverers - never originate anything.

One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire.

Dr. Einstein was not successful in school, but he found something in the air from his own imagination and his own brain power, and look what he did.

What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.

I just want to creatively grow and be inspired. I don't want to do anything generic or dumb.

The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

There are geniuses, savants; I'm not one of them. I work hard, I see where popular culture's going to move, but I've gotta keep having information pumped into me. I look under every rock.

So-called "inspiration" is no more than an extreme example of a process which constantly goes on in the minds of all of us.

Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful toneis silenced.

I just like to stay creative. Anything that can keep my mind going.

The imagination is how things get done. You have to cultivate creativity.

The beginning of genius is being scared shitless.

Some of the best ideas come sort of out of nowhere and when you're not expecting it.

A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.

I pressed down the mental accelerator. The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea.

I've never had a really creative idea sitting at my desk. All the big ideas that made a difference happened when I was playing outside.

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.

Hunger is the handmaid of genius.

The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why.

Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work least, for they are thinking out inventions.