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

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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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The mind of the Renaissance was not a pilgrim mind, but a sedentary city mind, like that of the ancients.
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There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.
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Heaven is to be at peace with things.
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Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith.
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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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What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude : the aims of friendship , religion , science , and art .
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It is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously - these have been thought points of honor with the gods.
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Memory itself is an internal rumour.
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Well-bred instinct meets reason halfway
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A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit.
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The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.
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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.
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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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Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
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Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence.
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I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world.
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The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.
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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.
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It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
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