George Santayana Quotes

Most popular George Santayana Quotes

Habit is stronger than reason. - George Santayana quote.
Habit is stronger than reason.
— George Santayana

habit

Wisdom comes by disillusionment. - George Santayana quote.
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
— George Santayana

wisdom

It is wisdom to believe the heart. - George Santayana quote.
It is wisdom to believe the heart.
— George Santayana
The Bible is literature, not dogma. - George Santayana quote.
The Bible is literature, not dogma.
— George Santayana

Bible

Sanity is a madness put to good uses. - George Santayana quote.
Sanity is a madness put to good uses.
— George Santayana
The wisest mind hath something to learn. - George Santayana quote.
The wisest mind hath something to learn.
— George Santayana
Music is essentially useless, as is life. - George Santayana quote.
Music is essentially useless, as is life.
— George Santayana

music

The highest form of vanity is love of fame. - George Santayana quote.
The highest form of vanity is love of fame.
— George Santayana Dialogues in Limbo

fame vanity

The family is one of nature's masterpieces. - George Santayana quote.
The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

family masterpiece

The wisest mind has something yet to learn. - George Santayana quote.
The wisest mind has something yet to learn.
— George Santayana
Theory helps us bear our ignorance of facts. - George Santayana quote.
Theory helps us bear our ignorance of facts.
— George Santayana

theory

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts. - George Santayana quote.
Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.
— George Santayana
Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence. - George Santayana quote.
Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

potential

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are. - George Santayana quote.
Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.
— George Santayana Little Essays

intelligence

To turn events into ideas is the function of literature. - George Santayana quote.
To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.
— George Santayana Little Essays

literature ideas

Knowledge of the possible is the beginning of happiness. - George Santayana quote.
Knowledge of the possible is the beginning of happiness.
— George Santayana
A child educated only at school is an undereducated child. - George Santayana quote.
A child educated only at school is an undereducated child.
— George Santayana
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness. - George Santayana quote.
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
— George Santayana

happiness

I have imagination, and nothing that is real is alien to me. - George Santayana quote.
I have imagination, and nothing that is real is alien to me.
— George Santayana Little Essays

imagination

Myths are not believed in, they are conceived and understood. - George Santayana quote.
Myths are not believed in, they are conceived and understood.
— George Santayana
Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it. - George Santayana quote.
Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it.
— George Santayana The Sense of Beauty
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana quote.
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
— George Santayana
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana quote.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

the past history

Religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence. - George Santayana quote.
Religion is the love of life in the consciousness of impotence.
— George Santayana Winds of Doctrine

religion

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world. - George Santayana quote.
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

art artists

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. - George Santayana quote.
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
— George Santayana Scepticism and Animal Faith

death life cures

Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can achieve. - George Santayana quote.
Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can achieve.

environment nature impermanence

Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds. - George Santayana quote.
Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.
— George Santayana Dominations and Powers

chaos confusion

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. - George Santayana quote.
The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
— George Santayana
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences. - George Santayana quote.
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
— George Santayana

America

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself. - George Santayana quote.
Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
— George Santayana The Ethics of Spinoza

dignity

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human. - George Santayana quote.
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
— George Santayana

friendship

Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character. - George Santayana quote.
Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.
— George Santayana
To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well. - George Santayana quote.
To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well.

play work & play

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. - George Santayana quote.
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

fanaticism

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. - George Santayana quote.
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
— George Santayana

enthusiasm

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it. - George Santayana quote.
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
— George Santayana Little Essays

truth

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness. - George Santayana quote.
It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

appreciation

A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection. - George Santayana quote.
A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

dreams (during sleep)

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love. - George Santayana quote.
To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

war

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh a fool. - George Santayana quote.
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh a fool.
— George Santayana
Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand. The whole world is doing things. - George Santayana quote.
Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand. The whole world is doing things.
— George Santayana
If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them. - George Santayana quote.
If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them.
— George Santayana
Nothing is so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject. - George Santayana quote.
Nothing is so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
— George Santayana
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said. - George Santayana quote.
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said.
— George Santayana
We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere. - George Santayana quote.
We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

vanity

Words are weapons, and it is dangerous in speculation, as in politics, to borrow them from our enemies. - George Santayana quote.
Words are weapons, and it is dangerous in speculation, as in politics, to borrow them from our enemies.
— George Santayana Obiter Scripta

words

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better. - George Santayana quote.
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.
— George Santayana

advertising

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood. - George Santayana quote.
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

arrogance

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. - George Santayana quote.
What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.
— George Santayana

religion

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject. - George Santayana quote.
That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

fear gods

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood. - George Santayana quote.
Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.
— George Santayana
Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over; but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light. - George Santayana quote.
Truth is a jewel which should not be painted over; but it may be set to advantage and shown in a good light.
— George Santayana
The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling.  We live in intellectual slums. - George Santayana quote.
The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling.  We live in intellectual slums.
— George Santayana Victor Wolfgang von Hagen

mediocrity

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. - George Santayana quote.
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
— George Santayana

attitude

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer. - George Santayana quote.
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.
— George Santayana Skepticism and Animal Faith

skepticism

Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated. - George Santayana quote.
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
— George Santayana
Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality. - George Santayana quote.
Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

children parents

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions. - George Santayana quote.
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
— George Santayana
It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn. - George Santayana quote.
It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.
— George Santayana Winds of Doctrine

self-control

Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length. - George Santayana quote.
Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length.

poetry

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 quote.
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
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 quote.
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

men and women

A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interests in the present. - George Santayana quote.
A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interests in the present.
— George Santayana Persons and Places: The Background of My Life

memory

Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be. - George Santayana quote.
Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be.

time

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When...experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. - George Santayana quote.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When...experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.
— George Santayana The Life of Reason

progress

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 quote.
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 The Life of Reason

possessions

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men into their own image, to be servants of their human interests. - George Santayana quote.
My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men into their own image, to be servants of their human interests.
— George Santayana Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies

atheism

There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting that the text. The world is one of these books. - George Santayana quote.
There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting that the text. The world is one of these books.
— George Santayana Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies

the world

I like to walk about amidst 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 quote.
I like to walk about amidst 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 Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies

wealth things possessions

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 quote.
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 My Host the World

religion

Philosophy is a more intense sort of experience than common life is, just as pure and subtle music, heard in retirement, is something keener and more intense than the howling of storms or the rumble of cities. - George Santayana quote.
Philosophy is a more intense sort of experience than common life is, just as pure and subtle music, heard in retirement, is something keener and more intense than the howling of storms or the rumble of cities.

philosophy

Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea.  Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained. - George Santayana quote.
Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea.  Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.
— George Santayana The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy

philosophers

Our dignity is not in what we do but in what we understand.
— George Santayana Winds of Doctrine

understanding

There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting that the text.  The world is one of these books.
— George Santayana Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies

the world