George Santayana Quotes - Page 13

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You cannot prove realism to a complete sceptic or idealist; but you can show an honest man that he is not a complete sceptic or idealist, but a realist at heart. So long as he is alive his sincere philosophy must fulfil the assumptions of his life and not destroy him.

George Santayana

Philosophy, Heart, Reality

Durant Drake, Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, James Bissett Pratt, Arthur Kenyon Rogers, George Santayana (1920). “Essays in critical realism: a co-operative study of the problem of knowledge”

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The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.

George Santayana

Life, Believe, Long

George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.60, Indiana University Press

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Art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords in concrete experience - the union of life and peace.

George Santayana

Life, Art, Peace

George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2015). “The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Art, Volume VII, Book Four”, p.107, MIT Press

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Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair.

George Santayana

Winter, Civilization, Long

George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana: Character and opinion in the United States. The genteel tradition at bay. Dewey's naturalistic metaphysics. Philosophical heresy”

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... so in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being that has known how to touch it. That being is not selected; it is recognised and obeyed.

George Santayana

Love, Heart, Surrender

"The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from All the Works of George Santayana".

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Order, for a liberal, means only peace; and the hope of a profound peace was one of the chief motives in the liberal movement. Concessions and tolerance and equality would thus have really led to peace, and to peace of the most radical kind, the peace of moral extinction.

George Santayana

Mean, Order, Profound

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Old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp.

George Santayana

Memories, Self, Bird

George Santayana (2011). “The Life of Reason: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense”, p.172, MIT Press

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To condemn spontaneous and delightful occupations because they are useless for self-preservation shows an uncritical prizing of life irrespective of its content.

George Santayana

Self, Useless, Occupation

George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.18, Courier Corporation

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The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form.

George Santayana

Real, History, Theatre

George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.84, Indiana University Press

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In unphilosophical minds any rare or unexpected thing excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar excites wonder also.

George Santayana

Philosophical, Mind, Unexpected

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Incapacity to appreciate certain types of beauty may be the condition sine qua non for the appreciation of another kind; the greatest capacity both for enjoyment and creation is highly specialized and exclusive, and hence the greatest ages of art have often been strangely intolerant. The invectives of one school against another, perverse as they are philosophically, are artistically often signs of health, because they indicate a vital appreciation of certain kinds of beauty, a love of them that has grown into a jealous passion.

George Santayana

Appreciation, Art, Passion

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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

Football, Art, Kindness

George Santayana (1968). “Santayana on America: Essays, Notes, and Letters on American Life, Literature, and Philosophy”

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O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.

George Santayana

Wise, Art, Believe

George Santayana (1979). “The complete poems of George Santayana: a critical edition”, Associated Univ Pr

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Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

Change, Wisdom, Memories

The Life of Reason vol. 1, ch. 12 (1905)

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Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

George Santayana

Thinking, Firsts, Surrender

Scepticism and Animal Faith ch. 9 (1923)

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Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.

George Santayana

Memories, Past, Echoes

George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.375, 谷月社

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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

Mean, Recognition, Nasty

George Santayana (2011). “The Life of Reason: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense”, p.48, MIT Press

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It is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously - these have been thought points of honor with the gods.

George Santayana

Honor, Atheism, Deities

George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.54, Рипол Классик

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Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that 'a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.' At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram... he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.

George Santayana

God, Philosophy, Men

George Santayana (1954). “The Life of Reason ; Or, The Phases of Human Progress. One-volume Ed”

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Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

George Santayana

Religion, Fairy Tale, Tales

George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.8, Indiana University Press

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Fear first created the gods.

George Santayana

Religion, Atheism, Firsts

George Santayana (1932). “The Life of Reason”, p.1222, Library of Alexandria

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The Universe, so far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine; its extent, its order, its beauty, its cruelty, makes it alike impressive.

George Santayana

Order, Space, Wonderful

George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2014). “The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Religion, Volume VII, Book Three”, p.114, MIT Press

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Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.

George Santayana

Love, Men, Giving

George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.99, Рипол Классик

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Logic, like language, is partly a free construction and partly a means of symbolizing and harnessing in expression the existing diversities of things; and whilst some languages, given a man's constitution and habits, may seem more beautiful and convenient to him than others, it is a foolish heat in a patriot to insist that only his native language is intelligible or right.

George Santayana

Beautiful, Mean, Men

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Nietzsche said that the earth has been a madhouse long enough. Without contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression, and say that philosophy has been long enough an asylum for enthusiasts.

George Santayana

Philosophy, Philosophical, Expression

George Santayana (1998). “The Genteel Tradition: Nine Essays”, p.116, U of Nebraska Press

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Born: December 16, 1863
Died: September 26, 1952
Occupation: Philosopher
Cite this Page: Citation

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