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Fear first created the gods.

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
Gods
Atheism
Created
Religion
Fear
Firsts
First

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Men become superstitious, not because they have too much imagination, but because they are not aware that they have any.
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Does the thoughtful man suppose that...the present experiment in civilization is the last world we will see?
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A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
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In unphilosophical minds any rare or unexpected thing excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar excites wonder also.
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The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.
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To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
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To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
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Spirit itself is not human it may spring up in any life... it may exist in all animals, and who know in how many undreamt-of beings, or in the midst of what worlds?
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The aim of education is the condition of suspended judgment on everything.
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There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
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Beautiful things, when taste is formed, are obviously and unaccountably beautiful.
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Old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp.
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Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.
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Life is not a spectacle or a feast it is a predicament.
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Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
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Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.
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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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The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.
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Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.
George Santayana
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Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best clothes for the amusement of posterity. Neither thing lasts, and photography came as a welcome salve to keep those precious, if slightly ridiculous, things a little longer in the world.
George Santayana