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
Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.
Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They may all collapse altogether.
When all beliefs are challenged together, the just and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and re-establish themselves alone.
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across a void of mystery and dread.
Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge.
It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine then out of a prig
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.
The love of all-inclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art.
People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another.
All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.
To understand one's self is the classic form of consolation; to delude one's self is the romantic
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who disregard the past are bound to repeat it.