"Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continual comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them."

George Santayana Literature See all quotes by George Santayana →

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“Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.”

“American life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost before he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension, cheery self-confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so it seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.”

“The soul, too, has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.”

“It is not society's fault that most men seem to miss their vocation. Most men have no vocation.”

“Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.”

“Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.”

Resonant Thoughts

"We must... maintain that mathematical geometry is not a science of space insofar as we understand by space a visual structure that can be filled with objects - it is a pure theory of manifolds."

— Hans Reichenbach

Philosophy1891–1953

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"Since my logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding, not that it may with the slender tendrils of the mind snatch at and lay hold of abstract notions , but that it may in very truth dissect na…"

— Francis Bacon

Literature1909–1992

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"Preparing his son to be a football hero was Jack’s dad’s unconscious way of preparing Jack for manhood by preparing him to sacrifice his body in exchange for the social bribes of being praised and val…"

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Science1943

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"Fellows of colleges in the universities are in one sense the recipients of alms, because they receive funds which originally were of an eleemosynary character."

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Law1820–1894

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