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Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia it is by no means a representative of reason.

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
Mean
Custom
Representatives
Customs
Natural
Means
Political
Inertia
Government
Representative
Reason
Equilibrium

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It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.
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There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.
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Docility is the observable half of reason.
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Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
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Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
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Sanctity and genius are as rebellious as vice.
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What brings enlightenment is experience, in the sad sense of this word--the pressure of hard facts and unintelligible troubles, making a man rub his eyes in his waking dream, and put two and two together. Enlightenment is cold water.
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Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
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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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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.
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Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
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To fight is a radical instinct if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other's looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions.
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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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The love of all-inclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art.
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Music is essentially useless, as life is but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.
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The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
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To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.
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The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.
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