George Santayana (1863 - 1952)
US (Spanish-born) philosopher
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
George Santayana
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.
George Santayana
America is a young country with an old mentality.
George Santayana
Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel.
George Santayana
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.
George Santayana
Sanity is a madness put to good use.
George Santayana
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
George Santayana
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
George Santayana
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
George Santayana
The wisest mind has something yet to learn.
George Santayana
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
George Santayana
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
George Santayana
Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.
George Santayana, "The German Mind: A Philosophical Diagnosis"
The young man who has not wept is a savage,
and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
George Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo (1925) ch. 3
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, ch. 10
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, Introduction
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 3
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4
Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.
George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4
Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 8
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
George Santayana, Little Essays (1920) "Ideal Immortality"
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana, Soliloquies in England, 1922, "War Shrines"
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.
George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.
George Santayana, Winds of Doctrine (1913) ch. 2
Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it.
George Santayana, Winds of Doctrine (1913) ch. 4 |
