George Santayana
George Santayana
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana, was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Originally from Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States from the age of eight and identified himself as an American, although he always kept a valid Spanish passport. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters. At the age of forty-eight, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth16 December 1863
CityMadrid, Spain
CountrySpain
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.
The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
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.
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.
Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end.
I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.
If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.
The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.
The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.