574 Quotes by George Santayana

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

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

It is right to prefer our own country to all others, because we are children and citizens before we can be travellers or philosophers.

Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.

To condemn spontaneous and delightful occupations because they are useless for self-preservation shows an uncritical prizing of life irrespective of its content.

To drink in the spirit of a place you should be not only alone but unhurried.

Ideal society is a drama enacted exclusively in the imagination.

Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument, its function is to make the worse appear the better article. A confused competition of all propagandas -- those insults to human nature -- is carried on by the most expert psychological methods -- for instance, by always repeating a lie.