Quote

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

George Santayana

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George Santayana
Age: 88 †
Born: 1863
Born: October 2
Died: 1952
Died: September 16
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Madrid
Spain
Jorge Santayana
Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana
Jorge Augustin Nicolas Ruiz de Santayana
George Santayana
Readily
Skeptical
Skepticism
Dignity
Internet
Like
Relinquished
Sceptic
Chastity

More quotes by George Santayana

Image
We crave support in vanity, as we do in religion, and never forgive contradictions in that sphere.
George Santayana
Image
To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.
George Santayana
Image
It is wisdom to believe the heart.
George Santayana
Image
The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.
George Santayana
Image
Prayer is not a substitute for work it is an effort to work further and be efficient beyond the range of one's powers.
George Santayana
Image
One real world is enough.
George Santayana
Image
The Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred.
George Santayana
Image
It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior.
George Santayana
Image
There is nothing sweeter than to be sympathized with.
George Santayana
Image
The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.
George Santayana
Image
The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
George Santayana
Image
Nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His talk about power, harshness, and superb immorality was the hobby of a harmless young scholar and constitutional invalid.
George Santayana
Image
It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.
George Santayana
Image
There must ... be in our very nature a very radical and widespread tendency to observe beauty, and to value it. No account of the principles of the mind can be at all adequate that passes over so conspicuous a faculty.
George Santayana
Image
The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.
George Santayana
Image
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.
George Santayana
Image
Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.
George Santayana
Image
Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.
George Santayana
Image
Imagination is potentially infinite. Though actually we are limited to the types of experience for which we possess organs, those organs are somewhat plastic. Opportunity will change their scope and even their center.
George Santayana
Image
... even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is nevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions.Our lives are mortal if our soul is not and the sentiment which reconciled Lucretius to death is as much needed if we are to face many deaths, as if we are to face only one.
George Santayana