Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. — George Santayana Doomed Copy Share Image
The theater, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history. — George Santayana Actor Copy Share Image
Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them. — George Santayana Freedom Copy Share Image
Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one. — George Santayana Aristocratic Copy Share Image
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality. — George Santayana Progress Copy Share Image
Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth. — George Santayana Military Copy Share Image
All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong,… — George Santayana Life Copy Share Image
The only kind of reform usually possible is reform from within; a more intimate study and more intelligent use of the traditional… — George Santayana Form Copy Share Image
If clearness about things produces a fundamental despair, a fundamental despair in turn produces a remarkable clearness or even playfulness about ordinary… — George Santayana Clearness Copy Share Image
A sanctity hangs about the sources of our being, whether physical, social, or imaginary. — George Santayana Imaginary Copy Share Image
Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality. — George Santayana Child Copy Share Image
To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language. — George Santayana Attempting Copy Share Image
Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up. — George Santayana Achievement Copy Share Image
“A man is morally free when...he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity” — George Santayana Truth Copy Share Image
Love is a brilliant illustration of a principle everywhere discoverable: namely, that human reason lives by turning the friction of material forces… — George Santayana Brilliant Copy Share Image
A grateful environment is a substitute for happiness. It can quicken us from without as a fixed hope and affection, or as… — George Santayana Affection Copy Share Image
We are not compelled in naturalism, or even in materialism, to ignore immaterial things; the point is that any immaterial things which… — George Santayana Action Copy Share Image
At best, the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself, or at most a few voluntary… — George Santayana Boat Copy Share Image
Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the… — George Santayana Atheism Copy Share Image
“There was a distinct class of these gentlemen tramps, young men no longer young, who wouldn't settle down, who disliked polite society… — George Santayana Poetry Copy Share Image
Photography at first was asked to do nothing but embalm our best smiles for the benefit of our friends and our best… — George Santayana Amusement Copy Share Image
There must ... be in our very nature a very radical and widespread tendency to observe beauty, and to value it. No… — George Santayana Accounts Copy Share Image
Truth is one of the realities covered in the eclectic religion of our fathers by the idea of God. Awe very properly… — George Santayana Anxious Copy Share Image
“To the uninitiated they have merely murmured, with a pitying smile and a wave of the hand: What! are you still troubled… — George Santayana Uninitiated Copy Share Image
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction… — George Santayana Barbarians Copy Share Image
The scientific value of truth is not, however, ultimate or absolute. It rests partly on practical, partly on aesthetic interests. As our… — George Santayana Absolutes Copy Share Image
There is (as I now find) no remorse for time long past, even for what may have mortified us or made us… — George Santayana Ashamed Copy Share Image
Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds… — George Santayana Ambition Copy Share Image
In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather… — George Santayana Active Copy Share Image
“It would be easy, however, to exaggerate the havoc wrought by such artificial conditions. The monotony we observe in mankind must not… — George Santayana Nature of man Copy Share Image
