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
Life means to have something definite to do—a mission to fulfill—and in the measure in which we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty. Human life, by its very nature, has to be dedicated to something.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Goals, Aspirations
We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Excellence
Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Power, Civilization
The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Difficulty, Adversity, Difficulties
This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and, therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Aptness, Success, Appropriateness
The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Goodness
To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Government
Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafes full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: People
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, Loss, Losing
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
The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but it will what we ought to avoid.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Reflection, Past, Regret
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Decisions
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
Man always travels along precipices. His truest obligation is to keep his balance.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Obligation
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
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
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
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: Arts, Artists, Art
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: Conviction, Goals, Change, Aspirations
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
There are people who so arrange their lives that they feed themselves only on side dishes.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Life
Stupefaction, when it persists, becomes stupidity.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Inferiority
An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Ideas
Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Living, Life
Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Excellence
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
Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Youth
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: The Present, Living
By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Perception, Exaggeration
Every intellectual effort sets us apart from the commonplace, and leads us by hidden and difficult paths to secluded spots where we find ourselves amid unaccustomed thoughts.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Thought
Man has to live with the body and soul which have fallen to him by chance.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Acceptance, Realization, Awareness
An “unemployed” existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Unemployment, Purpose, Work
Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Living, Life
All life is the struggle, the effort to be itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Being Ourselves
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
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Effort
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