George Santayana

The love of all-inclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art.

The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character.

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.

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

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

I like to walk about among 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.

Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.

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

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.