Famous Quotes by George Santayana
Below are famous quotes by George Santayana - US (Spanish-born) philosopher (1863 - 1952).
A child only educated at school is an uneducated child.
A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.
America is a young country with an old mentality.
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.
Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel.
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.
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 enabline it to make its peace with its destiny.
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy. On the contrary, in friendship union is more about ideal things: and in that sense it is more ideal and less subject to trouble than marriage is.
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, not condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
Sanity is a madness put to good use.
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
Society is like the air; necessary to breathe, but insufficient to live on.
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.
The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about.
The wisest mind has something yet to learn.
The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.
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