George Santayana

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

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

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.

Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end.

The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.

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

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

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.

There is no right government except good government.

Oaths are the fossils of piety.

Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith.

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

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.

Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.

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.

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

Music is essentially useless, as is life.

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

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

We do right enough darling, if we go wrong together.

Facts are all accidents. They all might have been different. They all may become different. They all may collapse altogether.