Jose Ortega y. Gasset (1883–1955) was a Spanish critic, journalist, and philosopher. He greatly influenced the cultural and literary renaissance of Spain in the 20th century.
Born in Madrid, Ortega studied at Madrid University (1898–1904) and was a professor from 1911. He also lived in South America and Portugal (1931–46.) Meditaciones del Quijote (1914; Meditations on Quixote, 1961) outlines national symbols in Spanish literature and compares them with others. In El tema de nuestro tiempo (1923, ‘Modern Theme,’) he argues that great philosophies demarcate their epochs’ cultural horizons.
Ortega’s best-known work, La rebelión de las masas (1930; The Revolt of the Masses, 1932,) foreshadowed the Spanish Civil War. Often mistakenly taken as a right-wing and elitist document, it is a masterly analysis of the 20th-century situation in which the masses have revolted against minorities. He corrected any possible ambiguities inherent in this book in his posthumous El hombre y la gente (1957; Man and People, 1957.)
Ortega introduced Marcel Proust and James Joyce to Spain, and his writing has radically influenced the majority of Spanish writers of his time and after him.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jose Ortega y. Gasset
The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but it will what we ought to avoid.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Past, Regret, Reflection
Liberalism—it is well to recall this today—is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Liberalism
An “unemployed” existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Purpose, Work, Unemployment
Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Revolution, Revolutionaries, Revolutions
Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Genius
The cynic, a parasite of civilization, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Cynicism
Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Youth
The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the cafe.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Artists, Art, Arts
There is but one way left to save a classic: to give up revering him and use him for our own salvation.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Books
All life is the struggle, the effort to be itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Being Ourselves
To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Government
To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Understanding
We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, “here and now” without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Living, The Present
One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: History
Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Excellence
Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect, they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Goals, Change, Aspirations, Conviction
There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Losers, Losing, Loss
The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Goodness
We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Creativity
Poetry is adolescence fermented and thus preserved
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Poetry
Minorities are individual or groups of individuals especially qualified. The masses are the collection of people not specially qualified.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Creation
To write well consists of continuously making small erosions, wearing away grammar in its established form, current norms of language. It is an act of permanent rebellion and subversion against social environs.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Writing
For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Things, Little Things
Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Opinion, Opinions
Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries. Only in proportion as we are desirous of living more do we really live.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Change, Life, Living
We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Thoughts, Thought
In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
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