Quote #26
When Socrates and his two great disciples composed a system of rational ethics they were hardly proposing practical legislation for mankind...They were merely writing an eloquent epitaph for their country.
More from George Santayana
- History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all, if memory and faith in memory were no…
- Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome.
- Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
- Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
- Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just,…
- Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.
- The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.
- The Bible is literature, not dogma.