Santayana
Created | Updated Feb 20, 2006
Herman Sattkamp, Ph.D. fas devoted a lifetime to the study of the philospher George Santayana. The following quotes are taken from his website.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
"[The psyche] begins to ask itself what it is living for. The answer is not, as an unspiritual philosophy would have it: In order to live on. The true answer is: In order to understand, in order to see the Ideas."
"So I believe, compulsorily and satirically, in the existence of this absurd world; but as to the existence of a better world, or of hidden reason in this one, I am incredulous, or rather, I am critically sceptical; because it is not difficult to see the familiar motives that lead men to invent such myths."
"Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention."
"Love makes us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers."
"Fun is a good thing, but only when it spoils nothing better."
"Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled."
"... in the end every philosopher has to walk alone."
"I am worse than an arm-chair philosopher: I am a poet in slippers."
"Life is a succession of second bests."
"The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums."
"It would be so awkward in heaven, after all one had discovered, to have to put on a perfect innocence."
"I suppose people aren't ashamed of doing or feeling anything, no matter what, if only they can do it together. And sometimes two people are enough."
"If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved."
"A man's hatred of his own condition no more helps to improve it than hatred of other people tends to improve them."
"That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions."
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
"... in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being that has known how to touch it. That being is not selected; it is recognised and obeyed."
"It is war that wastes a nation's wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation."
"Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean."
"... when men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different."
"Intoxication is a sad business, at least for a philosopher; for you must either drown yourself altogether, or else when sober again you will feel somewhat fooled by yesterday's joys and somewhat lost in to-day's vacancy. "
"What establishes superstitions is haste to understand, rash confidence in the moral intelligibility of things."
"That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject."
"Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes."
"... religion too often debauches the morality it comes to sanction, and impedes the science it ought to fulfil."
"... it is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig. "
"History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten."
"The love of life is not something rational, or founded on experience of life. It is something antecedent and spontaneous."
"I have no axe to grind; only my thoughts to burnish."
"America is all one prairie, swept by a universal tornado. Although it has always thought itself in an eminent sense the land of freedom, even when it was covered with slaves, there is no country in which people live under more overpowering compulsions."
"Wealth is dismal and poverty cruel unless both are festive. There" is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."
"But since, as a matter of fact, birth and death, actually occur, and our brief career is surrounded by vacancy, it is far better to live in the light of the tragic fact, rather than to forget or deny it, and build everything on a fundamental lie. "
"... only the dead have seen the end of war."
"It is not politics that can bring true liberty to the soul; that must be achieved, if at all, by philosophy ..."
"Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through a long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness."
"... if you bravely make the best of a crazy world, eternity is full of champions that will defend you."
We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past; remembering that once it was all that was humanly possible.
"Poetry is not to be spread on things like butter, but must shine on them like dew."
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
"[The psyche] begins to ask itself what it is living for. The answer is not, as an unspiritual philosophy would have it: In order to live on. The true answer is: In order to understand, in order to see the Ideas."
"So I believe, compulsorily and satirically, in the existence of this absurd world; but as to the existence of a better world, or of hidden reason in this one, I am incredulous, or rather, I am critically sceptical; because it is not difficult to see the familiar motives that lead men to invent such myths."
"Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention."
"Love makes us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers."
"Fun is a good thing, but only when it spoils nothing better."
"Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled."
"... in the end every philosopher has to walk alone."
"I am worse than an arm-chair philosopher: I am a poet in slippers."
"Life is a succession of second bests."
"The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums."
"It would be so awkward in heaven, after all one had discovered, to have to put on a perfect innocence."
"I suppose people aren't ashamed of doing or feeling anything, no matter what, if only they can do it together. And sometimes two people are enough."
"If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved."
"A man's hatred of his own condition no more helps to improve it than hatred of other people tends to improve them."
"That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions."
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
"... in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being that has known how to touch it. That being is not selected; it is recognised and obeyed."
"It is war that wastes a nation's wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation."
"Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean."
"... when men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different."
"Intoxication is a sad business, at least for a philosopher; for you must either drown yourself altogether, or else when sober again you will feel somewhat fooled by yesterday's joys and somewhat lost in to-day's vacancy. "
"What establishes superstitions is haste to understand, rash confidence in the moral intelligibility of things."
"That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject."
"Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes."
"... religion too often debauches the morality it comes to sanction, and impedes the science it ought to fulfil."
"... it is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig. "
"History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten."
"The love of life is not something rational, or founded on experience of life. It is something antecedent and spontaneous."
"I have no axe to grind; only my thoughts to burnish."
"America is all one prairie, swept by a universal tornado. Although it has always thought itself in an eminent sense the land of freedom, even when it was covered with slaves, there is no country in which people live under more overpowering compulsions."
"Wealth is dismal and poverty cruel unless both are festive. There" is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."
"But since, as a matter of fact, birth and death, actually occur, and our brief career is surrounded by vacancy, it is far better to live in the light of the tragic fact, rather than to forget or deny it, and build everything on a fundamental lie. "
"... only the dead have seen the end of war."
"It is not politics that can bring true liberty to the soul; that must be achieved, if at all, by philosophy ..."
"Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through a long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness."
"... if you bravely make the best of a crazy world, eternity is full of champions that will defend you."
We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past; remembering that once it was all that was humanly possible.
"Poetry is not to be spread on things like butter, but must shine on them like dew."
