Quote

Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.

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
Justice
Society
Morally
Individual
Justified
Spirit
Accident
Form
Bars
Must
Accidents
Forms
Conscience

More quotes by George Santayana

Image
It is rash to intrude upon the piety of others: both the depth and the grace of it elude the stranger.
George Santayana
Image
All language is rhetorical, and even the senses are poets.
George Santayana
Image
It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
George Santayana
Image
To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career.
George Santayana
Image
The Fates, like an absent-minded printer, seldom allow a single line to stand perfect and unmarred.
George Santayana
Image
Perhaps the universe is nothing but an equilibrium of idiocies.
George Santayana
Image
The love of all-inclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art.
George Santayana
Image
The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard.
George Santayana
Image
Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.
George Santayana
Image
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
Image
A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.
George Santayana
Image
Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.
George Santayana
Image
There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
George Santayana
Image
A country without a memory is a country of madmen.
George Santayana
Image
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
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
Repetition is the only form of permanence that Nature can achieve.
George Santayana
Image
Religion is indeed a convention which a man must be bred in to endure with any patience and yet religion, for all its poetic motley, comes closer than work-a-day opinion to the heart of things.
George Santayana
Image
Habit is stronger than reason.
George Santayana
Image
The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.
George Santayana