George Santayana Quotes

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

~ George Santayana

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.

~ George Santayana

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

~ George Santayana

Nothing is so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

~ George Santayana

Religions are the great fairy tales of conscience.

~ George Santayana

Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.

~ George Santayana

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

~ George Santayana

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

~ George Santayana

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.

~ George Santayana

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another: people are friends in spots.

~ George Santayana

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

~ George Santayana

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

~ George Santayana

Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

~ George Santayana

Man is as full of potentiality as he is of impotence.

~ George Santayana

For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.

~ George Santayana

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

~ George Santayana

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome.

~ George Santayana

It is wisdom to believe the heart.

~ George Santayana

Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.

~ George Santayana