George Santayana Quotes

Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.

By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

Oaths are the fossils of piety.

The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.

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

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.

All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.

Love is only half the illusion; the lover, but not his love, is deceived.

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.

To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.

Half our standards come from our first masters and the other half from our first loves.

The earth has its music for those who will listen.

I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them.