George Santayana
George Santayana
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana, was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Originally from Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States from the age of eight and identified himself as an American, although he always kept a valid Spanish passport. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters. At the age of forty-eight, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth16 December 1863
CityMadrid, Spain
CountrySpain
George Santayana quotes about
I believe in the possibility of happiness, if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions, including optimism.
A man's feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
The empiricist... thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.
Philosophers are as jealous as women; each wants a monopoly of praise
Great is this organism of mud and fire, terrible this vast, painful, glorious experiment
Love makes us poets, and the approach of death should makes us philosophers
Sanity is a madness put to good use.
Sanity is a madness put to good uses
Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.
All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.
To be interested in the changing seasons is, in this middling zone, a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
To understand one's self is the classic form of consolation; to delude one's self is the romantic
Those who disregard the past are bound to repeat it.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.