George Santayana - Man Quotes

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The diseases which destroy a man are no less natural than the instincts which preserve him.

George Santayana
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.

George Santayana
There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal, as if it were not a benefit and a joy to a man, being what he is, to know that many are, have been, and will be better than he.

George Santayana
Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing.

George Santayana
Because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. By their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy. Let us therefore be frankly human. Let us be content to live in the mind.

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

George Santayana
The spirit's foe in man has not been simplicity, but sophistication.

George Santayana
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.

George Santayana
What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.

George Santayana
Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.

George Santayana