Q0099

“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to…” — Alfred North Whitehead (Adventures of Ideas)

Verified English quotation. Primary source: Adventures of Ideas. Theme: order.

English

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.
Thinker Alfred North Whitehead
School Process Philosophy
Source Adventures of Ideas
Theme Order
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source and attribution

The archive attributes this English wording to Adventures of Ideas and files it under Process Philosophy. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

About Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) was an English mathematician-philosopher who co-authored Principia Mathematica with Russell, then developed process metaphysics at Harvard. Science and the Modern World and Process and Reality rethink nature as events, not inert stuff.

How to read this passage

Philosophers ask whether order is discovered in nature, imposed by rulers, or cultivated through custom. Chaos and creativity stand as its counterparts. This passage enters that discussion through order.

Concepts in this quote

Order
Order names cosmos, ritual, law, and the patterned stability that makes shared life possible—or oppressive.

How to cite this quotation

APA: Alfred North Whitehead. (n.d.). The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0099

MLA: Alfred North Whitehead. “The art of progress is to preserve order….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0099.

Chicago: Alfred North Whitehead. “The art of progress is to preserve order….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0099.

Frequently asked questions

What is the source of the quotation “The art of progress is to preserve order…”?

The passage is attributed to Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas. The archive attributes this English wording to Adventures of Ideas and files it under Process Philosophy. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

What does Alfred North Whitehead mean by order?

Philosophers ask whether order is discovered in nature, imposed by rulers, or cultivated through custom. Chaos and creativity stand as its counterparts. This passage enters that discussion through order.

Same thinker

More from Alfred North Whitehead

  1. The many become one, and are increased by one.
  2. In the Garden of Eden Adam saw the animals before he named them: in the traditional system, children named the animals before they saw them.
  3. The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
  4. Seek simplicity and distrust it.

All quotations by Alfred North Whitehead

Same theme

More on order

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the order theme