574 Quotes by George Santayana



  • Author George Santayana
  • Quote

    The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything.

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  • Author George Santayana
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    Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They may all collapse altogether.

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  • Author George Santayana
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    All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.

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  • Author George Santayana
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    All his life he [the American] jumps into the train after it has started and jumps out before it has stopped; and he never once gets left behind, or breaks a leg.

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  • Author George Santayana
  • Quote

    The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact.

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  • Author George Santayana
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    When all beliefs are challenged together, the just and necessary ones have a chance to step forward and re-establish themselves alone.

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