Quotes by Ortega y Gasset

“On the Bigotry of Culture:: it presented us with culture, with thought as something justified in itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by it's own essence, whatever its conc...”

“The only thing that interests the physicist is finding out on what assumptions a framework of things can be constructed which will enable us to know how to use them mechanically. Physics, as I have...”

“Man is a fantastic animal; he was born of fantasy, he is the son of "the mad woman of the house." And universal history is the gigantic and thousand-year effort to go on putting order into that hug...”

“Self-reflection or autognosis reveals that what is given in consciousness is, first and foremost, integral connectedness and organic unity of all thinking, feeling, and desiring. At the same time, ...”

“The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man”

“The majority of men have no opinions, and these have to be pumped into them from outside, like lubricants into machinery. Hence it is necessary that some mind or other should hold and exercise auth...”

“A concrete example of this mechanism is found in one of the most alarming phenomena of the last thirty years: the enormous increase in the police force of all countries. The increase of population ...”

“To spoil means to put no limit on caprice, to give one the impression that everything is permitted to him and that he has no obligations. The young child exposed to this regime has no experience of...”

“Thinking of things" is but a special way of dealing with them; but, as is obvious, it is a secondary manner of doing so and thus presupposes another [i.e., the primordial one]. The fundamental erro...”

“Let others think what they like: for me, the culmination of life consists of a pure and subtly dramatic passion.”

“When this reality, the one and only power that checks and disciplines man from within, vanishes because belief in it is slackening, the social domain falls prey to passions. The ensuing vacuum is f...”

“So it happens that we must ask ourselves, with regard to truth, not for a new criterion for it, which will be better polished than earlier ones, but, peremptorily and seizing it by the lapels, "wha...”

“... every hypothesis is a construction, and because of this it is an authentic theory. In so far as they merit that exigent name, ideas are never a mere reception of presumed realities, but they ar...”

“The idea of beauty, like a slab of magnificent marble, has crushed all possible refinement and vitality from the psychology of love.”

“We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.”

“Since love is the most delicate and total act of a soul, it will reflect the state and nature of the soul. The characteristics of the person in love must be attributed to love itself.”

“We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, here and now, without any postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.”

“To meditate is to sail a course, to navigate, among problems many of which we are in the process of clearing up. After each one looms another, whose shores are even more attractive, more suggestive...”

“Historical knowledge is a technique of the first order to preserve and continue a civilisation already advanced. Not that it affords positive solutions to the new aspect of vital conditions- life i...”

“The masses are advancing," said Hegel in apocalyptic fashion. "Without some new spiritual influence, our age, which is a revolutionary age, will produce a catastrophe," was the pronouncement of Com...”