Quotes from George Santayana

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

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

Words are weapons, and it is dangerous in speculation, as in politics, to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy

Sanity is madness put to good uses.

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

England is not the best possible world but it is the best actual country, and a great rest after America.

The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form.

Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it ca.

The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness, and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.

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

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect.

Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humours.

An ideal cannot wait for its realization to prove its validity.

It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to.

Memory itself is an internal rumour.

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

The tide of evolution carries everything before it, thoughts no less than bodies, and persons no less than nations

The Soul is the voice of the body's interests.

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape

Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy.

Trust the man who hesitates in his speech and is quick and steady in action, but beware of long arguments and long beards.