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The tendency to gather and to breed philosophers in universities does not belong to ages of free and humane reflection: it is scholastic and proper to the Middle Ages and to Germany.

George Santayana

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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
University
Tendency
Middle
Ages
Scholastic
Age
Tendencies
Scholastics
Free
Proper
Breed
Doe
Belong
Universities
Germany
Humane
Philosopher
Gather
Reflection
Philosophers

More quotes by George Santayana

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If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.
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... 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.
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Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.
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That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
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Catastrophes come when some dominant institution, swollen like a soap-bubble and still standing without foundations, suddenly crumbles at the touch of what may seem a word or idea, but is really some stronger material source.
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Repetition is the only form of permanence that Nature can achieve.
George Santayana
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Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.
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Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.
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Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention.
George Santayana
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Order, for a liberal, means only peace and the hope of a profound peace was one of the chief motives in the liberal movement. Concessions and tolerance and equality would thus have really led to peace, and to peace of the most radical kind, the peace of moral extinction.
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Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.
George Santayana
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Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
George Santayana
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Nietzsche said that the earth has been a madhouse long enough. Without contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression, and say that philosophy has been long enough an asylum for enthusiasts.
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It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.
George Santayana
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The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour.
George Santayana
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Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.
George Santayana
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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
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The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.
George Santayana
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A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
George Santayana
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In the contemplation of beauty we are raised above ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess.
George Santayana