Quotes by George Santayana
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.
The young man who has not wept is a savage,
and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.
For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.
Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it.
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. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.