George Santayana

Birth: 1863-12-16 , Madrid

Death: 1952-09-26 , Roma

George Santayana was a Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. His works cover a wide range of topics, including aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, and political philosophy. Santayana is known for his elegant prose and his philosophical skepticism, which led him to question many traditional beliefs.

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

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

For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

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

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

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

Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.

Sanity is a madness put to good use.

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Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás (1863-1952), known as George Santayana, was born in Madrid, Spain, but spent most of his life in the United States and Europe. He was a prominent philosopher, poet, and literary critic. Educated at Harvard, Santayana became an influential figure in American thought, though often critical of its pragmatic tendencies. His philosophy, known as naturalism, sought to explain reality without recourse to supernatural causes. Notable works include "The Sense of Beauty," "The Life of Reason," and "Persons and Places." His lyrical prose and his reflections on culture, religion, and the human condition continue to be studied. He died in Rome, Italy.