Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Jose Ortega y. Gasset (Spanish Philosopher)

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

Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset

Biography is: a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Biography, Legacy

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

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

Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Inferiority

An “unemployed” existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Unemployment, Purpose, Work

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

Minorities are individual or groups of individuals especially qualified. The masses are the collection of people not specially qualified.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset

Man has to live with the body and soul which have fallen to him by chance.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Awareness, Acceptance, Realization

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: Life, Living

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 idea is a putting truth in check-mate.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Ideas

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: Loss, Losers, Losing

To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Government

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

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

Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Decisions

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

I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset

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

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

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Understanding

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Excellence

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

Stupefaction, when it persists, becomes stupidity.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset

Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Power, Civilization

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: Change, Conviction, Aspirations, Goals

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

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, Revolutions, Revolutionaries

The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Goodness

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