Wisdom Quotes by George Santayana

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

— George Santayana

It is wisdom to believe the heart.

— George Santayana

“The worship of power is an old religion.”

— George Santayana

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

— George Santayana

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.

— George Santayana

Wisdom comes from disillusionment.

— George Santayana

Manhood and sagacity ripen of themselves; it suffices not to repress or distort them.

— George Santayana

Wisdom lies in taking everything with good humor and a grain of salt.

— George Santayana

The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy.

— George Santayana

Man has an inexhuastible faculty for lying, especially to himself.

— George Santayana

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

— George Santayana

Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it…

— George Santayana

“O WORLD, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise,. And on the inward vision close…

— George Santayana

Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every…

— George Santayana

Men almost universally have acknowledged providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence…

— George Santayana

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any…

— George Santayana

“All conditions are bearable, all dignities trumpery, and wisdom simply the gift of making the best of whatever is thrust upon us.”

— George Santayana

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

— George Santayana

There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills…

— George Santayana

O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close…

— George Santayana

“Wisdom lies in voluntary finitude and a timely change of heart: until maturity, multiplying the inclusions, up to the limit of natural…

— George Santayana

Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality of which youth is incapable,…

— George Santayana