George Santayana
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George Santayana (16 December 1863 in Madrid, Spain – 26 September 1952 in Rome, Italy), was a philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist.
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The Life of Reason (1905)
- Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- Reason in Common Sense
- The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men’s minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.
- Reason in Religion
- Santayana's response to Bacon's statement that "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."
- Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.
- Reason in Religion
- Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
- Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
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Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900)
- In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; as when we hear that to him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. Such characterizations appeal to our sense of fact. They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour. For we naturally seek to express his awful actuality, his unchallengeable power, no less than his holiness and his beauty.
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Dialogues in Limbo (1925)
- All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.
- The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.
- Philosophers are as jealous as women. Each wants a monopoly of praise.
- Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.
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About Santayana
- "In America literary reputations come and go so swiftly," I complained, fatuously. [Santayana's] answer was swift. "It would be insufferable if they did not." -- Gore Vidal, Palimpsest, a memoir.
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Attributed
- A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
A man's feet must be planted in his country but his eyes must survey the world.
- Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
- Chaos is perhaps at the bottom of everything.
- Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
- OR A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.
- Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree,it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different.
- Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.
- Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy.
- Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.
- Gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.
- Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.
- It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
- Love makes us poets and the approach of death makes us philosophers.
- Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.
- Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.
- Sanity is madness put to good uses.
- Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.
- Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
- The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.
- The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything.
- The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.
- The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
- There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
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Famous quotes
- Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes
...also cited in the form
- Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
- Only the dead have seen an end to war. (Incorrectly attributed to Plato by General Douglas MacArthur)
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External links
bs:George Santayana
de:George Santayana it:George Santayana pl:George Santayana pt:George Santayana ru:Сантаяна, Джордж sl:George Santayana
