George Santayana

Ci, co nie pamiętają przeszłości są skazani, by przeżyć ją ponownie.

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

Skepticism, like chastity should not be relinquished too readily.

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.

Revolutions are ambiguous things. Their success is generally proportionate to their power of adaptation and to be reabsorbed within them of what they rebelled against.

Man is a fighting animal; his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

Sanity is madness put to good use.

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.

Towarzystwo jest jak powietrze: niezbędne do oddychania, ale niewystarczające do życia.

Ten, kto nie pamięta przeszłości, będzie skazany na to, że ją przeżyje powtórnie.

Narodowość jest jak związek z kobietą: zbyt uwikłana w naszą naturę moralną, by ją zmienić z honorem i zbyt przypadkowa, by ją było warto zmienić.

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 can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

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

It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.

America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences. -from The Last Puritan

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

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.

People are usually more firmly convinced that their opinions are precious than that they are true.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

Art supplies constantly to contemplation what nature seldom affords in concrete experience -- the union of life and peace. -- from The Life of Reason

Prawie wszystkie mądre tezy mają dla równowagi równie mądre antytezy.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it

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.

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

Postęp, daleki od zmiany, zależy od retencyjności. Kiedy zmiana jest absolutna, nie ma żadnego bycia ulepszanym i nie ma ustalonego kierunku możliwej poprawy: a gdy nie zachowano doświadczenia, jak wśród dzikusów, niemowlęctwo jest wieczne. Ci, którzy nie pamiętają przeszłości, są skazani na jej powtarzanie.

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.

I like to walk about amidst 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.

Only the dead have seen the end of war. - Tipperary

The painfull truth falls like a weapon upon those that chose a poor defense.

A man's feet must be planted in his country but his eyes must survey the world.

Chaos is perhaps at the bottom of everything.

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree,it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different.

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.

Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy.

Fun is a good thing but only when it spoils nothing better.

Gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.

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

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

Love makes us poets and the approach of death makes us philosophers.

Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.

Only the dead have seen an end to war. (Incorrectly attributed to Plato by General Douglas MacArthur)

Religions are not true or false, but better or worse.

Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.

The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything.

The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.

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

Life is neither a feast nor a spectacle, but a predicament.

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.

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

Mądrość przychodzi wraz z utratą złudzeń.