Spanish Philosopher Quotes

Miguel de Unamuno

Ramon Llull

Teresa of Ávila

José Ortega y Gasset

Juan Luis Vives

George Santayana

Baltasar Gracián

You ought to make every effort to free yourselves even from venial sin, and to do what is most perfect.

Teresa of Ávila

The will, the will not ever to die, the refusal to resign oneself to death, ceaselessly builds the house of life while the keen blasts and icy winds of reason unceasingly batter at the structure and beat it down.

Miguel de Unamuno

The essence of nowness runs like a fire along the fuse of time.

George Santayana

This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and, therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child.

José Ortega y Gasset

The true way is the middle one, halfway between deserving a place and pushing oneself into it.

Baltasar Gracián

Tyranny, when they are strong, and democracies, when they are weak, can not tolerate criticism.

The one reaction Nietzsche cannot tolerate is indifference, and this is what his use of hyperbole is designed to eliminate.

Alexander Nehamas

If understanding followed no rule at all, there would be no good in the understanding nor in the matter understood, and to remain in ignorance would be the greatest good.

I understand the difference between the God and the Lord and I see how great is the difference between the God of Abraham and the God of Aristotle.

All these books were written by idle, unoccupied, ignorant men, the slaves of vice and filth. I wonder what it is that delights us in these books unless it be that we are attracted by indecency. Learning is not to be expected from authors who never saw even a shadow of learning. As for their story-telling, what pleasure is to be derived from the things they invent, full of lies and stupidity?

Juan Luis Vives

A hypothesis is empirical or scientific only if it can be tested by experience.... A hypothesis or theory which cannot be, at least in principle, falsified by empirical observations and experiments does not belong to the realm of science.

Francisco J. Ayala

Since there is no science which is not some part of philosophy, we should first see, therefore, what philosophy is.

Dominicus Gundissalinus