José Ortega y Gasset - Society Quotes

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I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

José Ortega y Gasset

Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.

José Ortega y Gasset

A society without an aristocracy, without an elite minority, is not a society.

José Ortega y Gasset

The direction of society has been taken over by a type of man who is not interested in the principles of civilization. Not of this or that civilization but — from what we can judge today — of any civilization. … The type of man dominant today is a primitive one, a Naturmensch rising up in the midst of a civilized world.

José Ortega y Gasset