Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Decisions
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 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
Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Youth
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: Living, Life, Change
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
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
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, Arts, Art
For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Things, Little Things
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
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
Stupefaction, when it persists, becomes stupidity.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
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
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
To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Government
An “unemployed” existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Purpose, Unemployment, Work
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, Conviction, Aspirations
Minorities are individual or groups of individuals especially qualified. The masses are the collection of people not specially qualified.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
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
Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Power, Civilization
Man has to live with the body and soul which have fallen to him by chance.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Realization, Awareness, Acceptance
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
Poetry is adolescence fermented and thus preserved
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Poetry
The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Discontent
An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset
Topics: Ideas
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
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Jacques Derrida French Philosopher, Literary Theorist
- Hans-Georg Gadamer German Philosopher
- John Rawls American Philosopher
- Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach German Philosopher
- Friedrich Schleiermacher German Theologian
- Emanuel Swedenborg Swedish Mystic, Theologian, Scientist
- Karl Popper Austrian-born British Philosopher
- Marshall Mcluhan Canadian Thinker
- Mencius Chinese Philosopher, Sage
- Jeremy Bentham British Philosopher, Economist
Leave a Reply