George Santayana Quotes
George Santayana was a Spanish-born American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Educated at Harvard alongside William James and Josiah Royce, he taught there for more than two decades before retiring at fifty to live and write in Europe. The quotes below are attributed to George Santayana, organized by topic.
Browse George Santayana by topic
George Santayana on God
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“Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature , and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good .”
Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 270
George Santayana on Happiness
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“Pt. III, Form; § 30: "The average modified in the direction of pleasure.", p. 125”
On fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws , fixed and external objects, principles , persons , and gods , are so many symbolic , algebraic expressions. They stand for experience ; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct
George Santayana on Knowledge
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“Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.”
George Santayana , as quoted in Quotations for Our Time (1977) edited by Laurence J. Peter -
Attributed to George Santayana:
“Wisdom comes by disillusionment.”
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“On fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws , fixed and external objects, principles , persons , and gods , are so many symbolic , algebraic expressions. They stand for experience ; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact.”
Pt. III, Form; § 30: "The average modified in the direction of pleasure.", p. 125 -
“Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said.”
Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 267 -
“Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 267”
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said. -
“Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 270”
Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature , and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good .
George Santayana on Life
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“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”
War Shrines -
“Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.”
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“That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.”
Wikiquote
George Santayana on Love
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Attributed to George Santayana:
“Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy.”
George Santayana on Mind
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“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”
The Life of Reason, Volume I -
“Even the most inspired verse, which boasts not without a relative justification to be immortal , becomes in the course of ages a scarcely legible hieroglyphic; the language it was written in dies, a learned education and an imaginative effort are requisite to catch even a vestige of its original force. Nothing is so irrevocable as mind .”
Wikiquote
George Santayana on Nature
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Attributed to George Santayana:
“The earth has its music for those who will listen.”
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“[Everything] ideal has a natural basis and everything natural an ideal development.”
Wikiquote
George Santayana on Time
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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
This famous statement has produced many paraphrases and variants: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes. Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it. Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them. Those who do not know history's mistakes are doo
Things actually not said by George Santayana
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as George Santayana but are in fact from someone else. Did George Santayana say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“The earth has music for those who listen.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: This statement is commonly associated with Santayana, but no source or attribution can be found in his works or correspondence. This quotation is appropriately attributed to Reginald Vincent Holmes' poem "The Magic of Sound", published in Fireside Fancies (1955, Edwards Brothers Inc.), part of the v
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“The working of great administrations is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self-interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Giorgio de Santillana (1902-1974) The Crime of Galileo (1958) | Many sources mistakenly attribute this quote to Santayana, and one even identifies the correct book, without realizing that George Santayana and Giorgio de Santillana are two different people
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“Books are “imaginative rehearsals for living,” stated novelist George Santayana. They are also a great equalizer in a diverse society. Book reading helps prepare a child for mental liberation from ignorance, fear, and falsehood.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: The lockdown’s lesson in reading books aloud, Christian Science Monitor (22 June 2020)
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“The writer-philosopher George Santayana is credited with the phrase: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Yet here we are, repeating that of just 52 years ago. Let us pray that come 2072, Americans then have at last heeded Santayana's warning and Dr. King’s dream is no longer words in a speech but reality being lived.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Geoff Caldwell: How long will history have to repeat before we learn?, The Joplin Globe (Jun 21, 2020)
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“Geoff Caldwell: How long will history have to repeat before we learn?, The Joplin Globe (Jun 21, 2020)”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: The writer-philosopher George Santayana is credited with the phrase: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Yet here we are, repeating that of just 52 years ago. Let us pray that come 2072, Americans then have at last heeded Santayana's warning and Dr. King’s dream is no lo
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“I revelled in the keen analysis of William James , Josiah Royce and young George Santayana.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois : A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (1968)
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy!”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: William James , of Santayana's The Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), in a letter to George H. Palmer (1900), as quoted in George Santayana : A Biography (2003) by John McCormick
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“In America literary reputations come and go so swiftly," I complained, fatuously. [Santayana's] answer was swift. "It would be insufferable if they did not .”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Gore Vidal , in Palimpsest, A Memoir (1995)
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“There is no God , and Mary is his mother." Often, almost certainly incorrectly, attributed to Santayana himself. More plausibly attributed to Robert Lowell, as a sardonic description of Santayana's philosophy.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Paul Mariani, "Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell" (1994), p. 159
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“Paul Mariani, "Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell" (1994), p. 159”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: There is no God , and Mary is his mother." Often, almost certainly incorrectly, attributed to Santayana himself. More plausibly attributed to Robert Lowell, as a sardonic description of Santayana's philosophy.
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“Santayana, indeed, is the Moses of the new naturalism , who discerned the promised land from afar but still wanders himself in the desert realms of being.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: John Herman Randall , "The Nature of Naturalism", epilogue to Naturalism and the Human Spirit (1944)
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason (1905): 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' The popular reformulation as 'those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it' compresses and slightly alters Santayana's wording. The line is also frequently misattributed to Edmund Burke and Winston Churchill, neither of whom wrote it.
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Did George Santayana say this? No.
“Religions are not true or false, but better or worse.”
This statement is presented in quotes in The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta (2008) by Arvind Sharma, p. 216, as a "Santayanan point", but earlier publications by the same author, such as in A Primal Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion (2006), p. 161, state it to be a stance of Santayana without actually indicating or in any ways implying that it is a direct quotation. (Disputed.)