Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.
- George Santayana

To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.
- George Santayana

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.
- George Santayana

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

The Bible is literature, not dogma.
- George Santayana

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
- George Santayana

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
- George Santayana

Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.
- George Santayana

Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.
- George Santayana

Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
- George Santayana

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.
- George Santayana

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
- George Santayana

Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.
- George Santayana

child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
- George Santayana

It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
- George Santayana

Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.
- George Santayana

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
- George Santayana

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
- George Santayana

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
- George Santayana

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.
- George Santayana

Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions.
- George Santayana

Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.
- George Santayana

Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.
- George Santayana

Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects in the world.
- George Santayana

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
- George Santayana

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

Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
- George Santayana

Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.
- George Santayana

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
- George Santayana

Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
- George Santayana

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
- George Santayana

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.
- George Santayana

Oaths are the fossils of piety.
- George Santayana

The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don’t understand it.
- George Santayana

Sanity is a madness put to good use.
- George Santayana

The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
- George Santayana

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.
- George Santayana

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
- George Santayana

Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.
- George Santayana

Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it.
- George Santayana

Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.
- George Santayana

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
- George Santayana

One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
- George Santayana

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sense, overcome.
- George Santayana

Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.
- George Santayana

Our character…is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.
- George Santayana

It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.
- George Santayana

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
- George Santayana

Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.
- George Santayana

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

There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
- George Santayana

Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.
- George Santayana

Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
- George Santayana

Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.
- George Santayana

A man’s feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
- George Santayana

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

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
- George Santayana

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts.
- George Santayana