„Mein Leben durchgestürmt; erst gross und mächtig, Nun aber geht es weise, geht bedächtig.“
Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante And Goethe
Zitate von George Santayana
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George Santayana
Geburtstag: 16. Dezember 1863
Todesdatum: 26. September 1952
George Santayana war ein spanischer Philosoph, Schriftsteller und Literaturkritiker. Santayana ist einer der einflussreichsten Vertreter der amerikanischen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts und gilt ebenso als führender Vertreter des kritischen Realismus. Wikipedia
Zitate George Santayana
„Wer sich nicht an die Vergangenheit erinnern kann, ist dazu verdammt, sie zu wiederholen.“
Variante: Wer sich an die Vergangenheit nicht erinnert, ist dazu verdammt sie zu wiederholen.
„Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said.“
— George Santayana, buch The Sense of Beauty
Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 267
The Sense of Beauty (1896)
„Sanity is a madness put to good uses.“
Quelle: The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings
„In Walt Whitman democracy is carried into psychology and morals.“
Quelle: The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1911), p. 53
Kontext: In Walt Whitman democracy is carried into psychology and morals. The various sights, moods, and emotions are given each one vote; they are declared to be all free and equal, and the innumerable commonplace moments of life are suffered to speak like the others. Those moments formerly reputed great are not excluded, but they are made to march in the ranks with their companions—plain foot-soldiers and servants of the hour.
„History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory.“
Quelle: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. V, Reason in Science, Ch. 2 "History"
Kontext: History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all, if memory and faith in memory were not what science necessarily rest on. In order to sift evidence we must rely on some witness, and we must trust experience before we proceed to expand it. The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.
„By their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy. Let us therefore be frankly human.“
Quelle: The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1911), p. 64
Kontext: Because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. By their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy. Let us therefore be frankly human. Let us be content to live in the mind.
„Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact.“
— George Santayana, buch The Sense of Beauty
Pt. III, Form; § 30: "The average modified in the direction of pleasure.", p. 125
The Sense of Beauty (1896)
Kontext: In 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.
„Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea.“
Quelle: The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1911), pp. 48-49
Kontext: Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.
„The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour“
Quelle: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. V, Reason in Science, Ch. 2 "History"
Kontext: History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all, if memory and faith in memory were not what science necessarily rest on. In order to sift evidence we must rely on some witness, and we must trust experience before we proceed to expand it. The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.
„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 doomed to repeat them.
There is a similar quote by Edmund Burke (in Revolution in France) that often leads to misattribution: "People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors."
The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense
Quelle: The Life of Reason: Five Volumes in One
Kontext: 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.
„A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.“
“Why I Am Not a Marxist” http://books.google.com/books?id=O4weAQAAMAAJ&q=educated+only+at+school+#search_anchor “Modern Monthly: Volume: 9″ (April 1935); Page: 77-79.
Other works
„My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.“
"On My Friendly Critics"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)
Quelle: Soliloquies in England & Later Soliloquies
![Artist: Samuel Johnson Woolf (1880-1948). Time magazine., images.google.com [ dead link ] The copyrights of Time magazine are held by Time, Inc. Copyright was not renewed on this early issue, which has therefore fallen into the public domain per US law. Time failed to renew the copyrights of many early issues. See wikisource:Time (magazine) The following issues of Time magazine are in the public domain. Before vol 23, no 5: before 22 Jan 1934 Vol 25, no 1 – vol 27, no 23: 7 Jan 1935 – 29 Jun 1936 Vol 34, nos 1–10: 3 Jul 1939 – 4 Sep 1939 Vol 45, nos 2–5: 7 Jan 1945 –29 Jan 1945](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Santayana.jpg){kind=link}