George Santayana quotes - page 2

George Santayana was a Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, recognized for his contributions to philosophy and literature. His works often explored themes such as reason, skepticism, and the nature of reality. He is remembered for insightful aphorisms and the famous saying, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Here are 256 of his quotes:

Music is essentially useless, as life is.

George Santayana

All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.

George Santayana

Sanity is madness put to good use.

George Santayana

An artist may visit a museum, but only a pedant can live there.

George Santayana

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sense, overcome.

George Santayana

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable what it is or what it means can never be said.

George Santayana

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.

George Santayana

Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.

George Santayana

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

George Santayana

Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.

George Santayana

Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.

George Santayana

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

George Santayana

The empiricist... thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

George Santayana

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.

George Santayana

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

George Santayana

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

George Santayana

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

George Santayana

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

George Santayana

Philosophers are as jealous as women each wants a monopoly of praise.

George Santayana

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

George Santayana

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean.

George Santayana

Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continual comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.

George Santayana