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We should have to abandon our vested illusions, our irrational religions and patriotisms.

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
Religions
Abandon
Illusion
Vested
Illusions
Irrational

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To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.
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A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.
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People never believe in volcanoes until the lava actually overtakes them.
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We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.
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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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There is nothing sacred about convention there is nothing sacred about primitive passions or whims but the fact that a convention exists indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.
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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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Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one.
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Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.
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Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable what it is or what it means can never be said.
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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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Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.
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The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
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History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.
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... so in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being that has known how to touch it. That being is not selected it is recognised and obeyed.
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A dream is always simmering below the conventional surface of speech and reflection.
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Oaths are the fossils of piety.
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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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Time is like an enterprising manager always bent on staging some new and surprising production, without knowing very well what it will be.
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