Jose Ortega y Gasset
Jose Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gassetwas a Spanish liberal philosopher, and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century, while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. His philosophy has been characterized as a "philosophy of life" that "comprised a long-hidden beginning in a pragmatist metaphysics inspired by William James, and with a general method from a realist phenomenology imitating Edmund Husserl, which served both his proto-existentialism and his realist historicism, which has been compared to both Wilhelm Dilthey...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth9 May 1883
CountrySpain
Jose Ortega y Gasset quotes about
The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.
We have not reached ethical perfection in hunting. One never achieves perfection in anything, and perhaps it exists precisely so that one can never achieve it. Its purpose is to orient our conduct and to allow us to measure the progress accomplished. In this sense, the advancement achieved in the ethics of hunting is undeniable.
Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.
By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.
Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.
To wonder is to begin to understand.
The choice of a point of view is the initial act of a culture.
We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.
Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.
I am myself and what is around me, and if I do not save it, it shall not save me.
Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect; they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.
Life is a struggle with things to maintain itself among them. Concepts are the strategic plan we form in answer to the attack.
tragedy in the theater opens our eyes so that we can discover and appreciate the heroic in reality.