Life, individual or collective, personal or historic, is the one entity in the universe whose substance is compact of danger, of adventure. It is, in the strict sense of the word, drama. The primary, radical meaning of life appears when it is employed in the sense not of biology, but of biography. For the very strong reason that the whole… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share
[T]he mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share
Whoever has not felt the danger of our times palpitating under his hand, has not really penetrated to the vitals of destiny,… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State, that… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
It would be a piece of ingenuousness to accuse the man of today of his lack of moral code. The accusation would leave him… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
In these years we are witnessing the gigantic spectacle of innumerable human lives wandering about lost in their own labyrinths, through not having anything… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-sat-isfied man. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
“For there is no doubt that the most radical division that is possible to make of humanity is that which splits into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are,… — José Ortega y Gasset Copy Share
What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men, but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
Romantic poses aside, let us recognize that "falling in love"...is an inferior state of mind, a form of transitory imbecility. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The masses think that is is easy to flee from reality, when it is the most difficult thing in the world. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share
