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
[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
Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the café. — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The history of the Roman Empire is also the history of the uprising of the Empire of the Masses, who absorb and… — Jose Ortega y Gasset Copy Share Image
The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its… — 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