574 Quotes by George Santayana

In any close society it is more urgent to restrain others than to be free oneself. Hence the tendency for the central authority to absorb and supersede such as are local or delegated.

A body seriously out of equilibrium, either with itself or with its environment, perishes outright. Not so a mind. Madness and suffering can set themselves no limit.

Nature drives with a loose rein and vitality of any sort can blunder through many a predicament in which reason would despair.

The works of nature first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke.

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch; or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.

There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny. It is all-permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity. Such a headless people has the mind of a worm and the claws of a dragon.

Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.

The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.