Inspirational Quotes by George Santayana (Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher)

Inspirational Quotations by George Santayana (Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher)

George Santayana (1863–1952,) born Jorge Augustin Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana, was a Spanish-born American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. He made significant contributions to aesthetics, speculative philosophy, and literary criticism.

Born in Madrid, Spain, Santayana grew up in Boston from the age of eight. He was educated at Harvard and stayed on as faculty until 1912. With the aid of a small inheritance, he subsequently resided in Europe, primarily in England and France. In 1924, he settled in Rome and remained there for the rest of his life. After 1939, Santayana withdrew from the world—a solitude revealed in the moral detachment of his writing. He emphasized not only the biological nature of the mind but also its creative and rational powers.

Santayana is renowned for developing a personal form of critical realism that was skeptical, materialistic, and humanistic. His later philosophy attempted to blend philosophical materialism with a deep concern for spiritual values and the natural world.

Santayana’s works include The Sense of Beauty (1896,) The Life of Reason (1905–06,) Skepticism and Animal Faith (1923,) The Realms of Being (1924,) and the popular novel The Last Puritan (1935.) He also published several volumes of poetry, which were compiled into The Complete Poems of George Santayana: A Critical Edition (1979.) His autobiography is Persons and Places (3 vols., 1944–53.)

Santayana’s most famous line about history is also one of the least accurately quoted: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (From The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense, 1905:284.)

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Depression is rage spread thin.
—George Santayana
Topics: Depression, Anger, One liners

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
—George Santayana
Topics: History, One liners

The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.
—George Santayana
Topics: Commitment

The quality of wit inspires more admiration than confidence
—George Santayana
Topics: Confidence, Admiration

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.
—George Santayana
Topics: Atheism

Words are weapons, and it is dangerous in speculation, as in politics, to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy
—George Santayana
Topics: Weapon, Words

It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
—George Santayana
Topics: Ability

The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.
—George Santayana
Topics: Family, Society

The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.
—George Santayana
Topics: Appreciation, Gratitude, Blessings

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean
—George Santayana
Topics: Culture

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.
—George Santayana
Topics: Intelligence

Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.
—George Santayana
Topics: Character

The Soul is the voice of the body’s interests.
—George Santayana
Topics: Body, Soul

America is a young country with an old mentality.
—George Santayana
Topics: America

Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.
—George Santayana
Topics: Conscience

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians.
—George Santayana
Topics: Reflection, Past, Progress, History

Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
—George Santayana

Man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body. He may like to go alone for a walk, but he hates to stand alone in his opinions.
—George Santayana
Topics: Opinion, Opinions

The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.
—George Santayana
Topics: Health, Advice, Disease

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.
—George Santayana
Topics: Family

The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
—George Santayana
Topics: The Body, Body

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
—George Santayana
Topics: War

Well-bred instinct meets reason half-way.
—George Santayana
Topics: Reason, Instincts

It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to.
—George Santayana
Topics: Passion, Virtue

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
—George Santayana
Topics: Sadness, Unhappiness

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
—George Santayana
Topics: Fashion, Innovation

There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.
—George Santayana
Topics: Food

Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.
—George Santayana
Topics: Soul

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

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.
—George Santayana
Topics: Experience

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
—George Santayana
Topics: Difficulties, Wisdom, Adversity

Sanity is madness put to good uses.
—George Santayana
Topics: Sanity

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.
—George Santayana
Topics: Parenting, Parents

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
Topics: Theater

Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.
—George Santayana
Topics: Society

To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time.
—George Santayana
Topics: Friendship

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
—George Santayana
Topics: Happiness, Realistic Expectations

Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.
—George Santayana
Topics: Perspective

Music is essentially useless, as life is.
—George Santayana
Topics: Music

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood.
—George Santayana
Topics: Anger