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George Santayana

55 quotes

George Santayana (1863–1952) was a Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist known for his elegant prose and incisive cultural commentary. His famous warning — "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" — is one of the most quoted lines in the English language.

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“Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.”

— George Santayana

Society

All Quotes by George Santayana

“When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions their reasons are always different.”

— George Santayana

Men

“Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.”

— George Santayana

Happiness

“The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.”

— George Santayana

Truth

“Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.”

— George Santayana

Society

“By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.”

— George Santayana

Nature

“To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.”

— George Santayana

Positive

“I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.”

— George Santayana

Science

“We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.”

— George Santayana

Future

“Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.”

— George Santayana

Experience

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

— George Santayana

History

“Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.”

— George Santayana

Experience

“The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.”

— George Santayana

Dreams

“Music is essentially useless, as is life.”

— George Santayana

Music

“A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption it is not a symbol, but a fraud.”

— George Santayana

Change

“It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.”

— George Santayana

Truth

“Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.”

— George Santayana

Money

“It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.”

— George Santayana

Marriage

“Knowledge is recognition of something absent it is a salutation, not an embrace.”

— George Santayana

Knowledge

“Wisdom comes by disillusionment.”

— George Santayana

Wisdom

“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

Art