George Santayana Quotes
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it."
- George Santayana
(Related: Balance, Saying)
"All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato."
- George Santayana
(Related: Thought)
"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."
- George Santayana
(Related: Living, Wrong)
"A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted."
- George Santayana
(Related: Happiness, Life, Judgment, Miscellaneous, Reflection, Will)
"A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world."
- George Santayana
(Related: Country, Eyes, Feet, Man, World)
"A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption; it is not a symbol, but a fraud."
- George Santayana
(Related: Change, Experience, Fraud, Symbol)
"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child."
- George Santayana
(Related: School)
"America is a young country with an old mentality."
- George Santayana
(Related: America, Country, Old)
"Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different."
- George Santayana
(Related: Men, Women, Sex, Friends)
"Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better."
- George Santayana
(Related: Advertising, Argument)
"For a man who has done his natural duty, death is as natural as sleep."
- George Santayana
(Related: Death, Duty, Man, Sleep)
"Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit."
- George Santayana
(Related: Fashion, Imitation, Innovation, Reason)
"Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
- George Santayana
(Related: Effort, Fanaticism)
"Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them."
- George Santayana
(Related: Experience)
"Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end."
- George Santayana
(Related: Emotion, End, Nothing)
"Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny."
- George Santayana
(Related: Peace, Religion, Soul, Destiny, Help, Myth)
"Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men."
- George Santayana
(Related: Men, People, Evil, Friends)
"Depression is rage spread thin."
- George Santayana
(Related: Depression)
"Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy."
- George Santayana
(Related: Friends, Intimacy)
"Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character."
- George Santayana
(Related: Happiness, Character)
"Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him."
- George Santayana
(Related: Friend, Man, Old)
"Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine."
- George Santayana
(Related: Faith, Thought, Heart, Light, Thinking)
"By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all."
- George Santayana
(Related: Power, Nature, Man, Questions)
"An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world."
- George Santayana
(Related: Dream, Artist, World)
"Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds."
- George Santayana
(Related: Chaos, Confusion, Name, Order)
"A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world."
- George Santayana
(Related: Soul, World)
"Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth."
- George Santayana
(Related: Religion, Victory, Wealth, Military, Worth)
"Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself."
- George Santayana
(Related: Dignity, Man)
"Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors."
- George Santayana
(Related: Design, Eccentricity, Paradise, Heresy, Hobbies, Individuality)
"Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better."
- George Santayana
(Related: Fun, Nothing)
"Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others."
- George Santayana
(Related: Life)
"To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say."
- George Santayana
(Related: People)
"Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited."
- George Santayana
(Related: Common sense, Nonsense)
"Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body."
- George Santayana
(Related: Soul, Body, Nothing)
"Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it."
- George Santayana
(Related: Nothing)
"Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment."
- George Santayana
(Related: Happiness, Life, Existence)
"When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different."
- George Santayana
(Related: Men, Women)
"History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there."
- George Santayana
(Related: History, People, Events, Lies)
"Oaths are the fossils of piety."
- George Santayana
(Related: Piety)
"We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible."
- George Santayana
(Related: Future, Past, Respect, Will)
"Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them."
- George Santayana
(Related: Tyranny)
"To reform means to shatter one form and to create another; but the two sides of this act are not always equally intended nor equally successful."
- George Santayana
(Related: Successful, Act, Reform)
"To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography."
- George Santayana
(Related: Soul, Geography)
"One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human."
- George Santayana
(Related: Friends, Race)
"Only the dead have seen the end of the war."
- George Santayana
(Related: War, End)
"Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies."
- George Santayana
(Related: Paradise)
"My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests."
- George Santayana
(Related: Men, Gods, Atheism, Piety, Universe)
"Wisdom comes by disillusionment."
- George Santayana
(Related: Wisdom, Disillusionment)
"It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases."
- George Santayana
(Related: Truth, Fact, Philosophy)
"Music is essentially useless, as is life."
- George Santayana
(Related: Life, Music)
"Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects in the world."
- George Santayana
(Related: Music, Feelings, Events, Giving, World)
"Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions."
- George Santayana
(Related: Hope, Children, Man, Possessions)
"Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament."
- George Santayana
(Related: Life)
"Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sense, overcome."
- George Santayana
(Related: Man, Sense, Terror)
"Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator."
- George Santayana
(Related: Money, Values, Language, May)
"Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness."
- George Santayana
(Related: Happiness, Knowledge, Beginning)
"Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace."
- George Santayana
(Related: Knowledge)
"Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace."
- George Santayana
(Related: Knowledge, Eating)
"Habit is stronger than reason."
- George Santayana
(Related: Habit, Reason)
"It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands."
- George Santayana
(Related: Art, America, Football, Jazz, Kindness, Museums)
"Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up."
- George Santayana
(Related: Achievement, Mankind)
"It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig."
- George Santayana
"It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well."
- George Santayana
"It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to."
- George Santayana
(Related: Devil, Force, Passion, Revenge)
"Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it."
- George Santayana
(Related: Egotism, Intolerance)
"Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are."
- George Santayana
(Related: Intelligence)
"In Greece wise men speak and fools decide."
- George Santayana
(Related: Men, Fools, Greece)
"If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved."
- George Santayana
(Related: Pain)
"I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty."
- George Santayana
(Related: Wealth, Liberty, Possessions, World)
"I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads."
- George Santayana
(Related: Ideas, Facts)
"It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness."
- George Santayana
(Related: Patience, Spirits, Unhappiness)
"The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy."
- George Santayana
(Related: Wisdom, Hunger, Philosophy)
"Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality."
- George Santayana
(Related: Experience, Children, Immortality, Memory, Parents)
"The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk."
- George Santayana
(Related: Conversation, Talk)
"The Soul is the voice of the body's interests."
- George Santayana
(Related: Soul, Body, Voice)
"The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication."
- George Santayana
(Related: Man, Simplicity, Sophistication, Spirit)
"The tendency to gather and to breed philosophers in universities does not belong to ages of free and humane reflection: it is scholastic and proper to the Middle Ages and to Germany."
- George Santayana
(Related: Germany)
"The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it."
- George Santayana
(Related: Truth)
"The wisest mind has something yet to learn."
- George Santayana
(Related: Mind)
"The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings."
- George Santayana
(Related: Experience, Word)
"The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be."
- George Santayana
(Related: Contradiction, World)
"The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age."
- George Santayana
(Related: Age, Old, Pride)
"Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts."
- George Santayana
(Related: Facts, Ignorance, Theory)
"The more rational an institution is the less it suffers by making concessions to others."
- George Santayana
"There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far."
- George Santayana
(Related: Courtesy, Press, Skepticism)
"The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape."
- George Santayana
(Related: Miser)
"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."
- George Santayana
(Related: Death, Cure)
"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana
(Related: Past)
"To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired."
- George Santayana
(Related: Being)
"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring."
- George Santayana
(Related: Love, Mind, Seasons, Spring, State)
"To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman."
- George Santayana
(Related: War, Quality, Positive, Crime, Delight, Merit)
"To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood."
- George Santayana
(Related: Blood, Deep, Delight)
"The love of all-inclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art."
- George Santayana
(Related: Art, Love, Philosophy)
"The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool."
- George Santayana
(Related: Fool, Man, Will)
"The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity."
- George Santayana
(Related: Imagination, Dignity, End, Importance, Measure, Reality)
"Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much."
- George Santayana
"Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end."
- George Santayana
(Related: People, End, Prayer)
"Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace."
- George Santayana
(Related: Religion, Courage, Dignity, Grace, Humility, Man)
"Sanity is madness put to good use."
- George Santayana
(Related: Madness, Sanity)
"Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily."
- George Santayana
(Related: Chastity, Skepticism)
"Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on."
- George Santayana
(Related: Society)
"That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject."
- George Santayana
(Related: Fear, Gods, First)
"The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it."
- George Santayana
(Related: Inspiration, Bible)
"The Bible is literature, not dogma."
- George Santayana
(Related: Bible, Literature)
"The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character."
- George Santayana
(Related: Wife, Character, Man, May, Old, Philosophy, Pleasure, Strangers)
"The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation."
- George Santayana
(Related: Body, Mind, Reward)
"Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots."
- George Santayana
(Related: Friendship, People, Mind)
"The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer."
- George Santayana
"The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him."
- George Santayana
(Related: Man)
"The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it."
- George Santayana
(Related: Truth, Dream)
"The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal."
- George Santayana
(Related: Art, Effort, Existence)
"The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism."
- George Santayana
(Related: Time, Optimism, Evil, Existence)
"The family is one of nature's masterpieces."
- George Santayana
(Related: Family, Nature)
"The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas."
- George Santayana
(Related: Education, Experience, Ideas, Difficulty)
"The highest form of vanity is love of fame."
- George Santayana
(Related: Love, Fame, Vanity)
"The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients."
- George Santayana
(Related: Mind)
"The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise."
- George Santayana
(Related: Beauty, Disguise, Lovers)