 |
(no category)
|
|
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience.
-George Santayana
|
|
|
Every actual animal is somewhat dull and somewhat mad. He will at times miss his signals and stare vacantly when he might well act, while at other times he will run off into convulsions and raise a dust in his own brain to no purpose. These imperfections are so human that we should hardly recognise ourselves if we could shake them off altogether. Not to retain any dulness would mean to possess untiring attention and universal interests, thus realising the boast about deeming nothing human alien to us; while to be absolutely without folly would involve perfect self-knowledge and self-control. The intelligent man known to history flourishes within a dullard and holds a lunatic in leash. He is encased in a protective shell of ignorance and insensibility which keeps him from being exhausted and confused by this too complicated world; but that integument blinds him at the same time to many of his nearest and highest interests. He is amused by the antics of the brute dreaming within his breast; he gloats on his passionate reveries, an amusement which sometimes costs him very dear. Thus the best human intelligence is still decidely barbarous; it fights in heavy armour and keeps a fool at court.
-George Santayana
|
|
Advertising
|
|
|
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.
-George Santayana
|
|
Advice
|
|
|
The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.
-George Santayana
|
|
America
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
America is a young country with an old mentality.
-George Santayana
|
|
Anger
|
|
|
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood.
-George Santayana
|
|
Art
|
|
|
The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal.
-George Santayana
|
|
Assumptions
|
|
|
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
|
|
Beauty
|
|
|
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.
-George Santayana
|
|
Body, the
|
|
|
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
-George Santayana
|
|
Business
|
|
|
The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness, and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.
-George Santayana, The Crime of Galileo
|
|
Chaos
|
|
|
Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.
-George Santayana
|
|
Character
|
|
|
Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.
-George Santayana
|
|
City Life, Cities
|
|
|
Boston is a moral and intellectual nursery always busy applying first principals to trifles.
-George Santayana
|
|
Commitment
|
|
|
The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.
-George Santayana
|
|
Concentration
|
|
|
The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything.
-George Santayana
|
|
Conscience
|
|
|
Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.
-George Santayana
|
|
Conversation
|
|
|
The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.
-George Santayana
|
|
Death
|
|
|
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colors of life in all their purity.
-George Santayana
|
|
Depression
|
|
|
Depression is rage spread thin.
-George Santayana, attributed
|
|
Determination
|
|
|
The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.
-George Santayana
|
|
Dignity
|
|
|
Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
-George Santayana
|
|
|
Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.
-George Santayana
|
|
Doubt
|
|
|
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect.
-George Santayana
|
Books by and about George Santayana