Jose Ortega y Gasset Quotes

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Jose Ortega y Gasset

Profession : Philosopher

Birth : May 9, 1883

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

We cannot put off living until we are ready.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Law is born from despair of human nature.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

To live is to feel oneself lost.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

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

Jose Ortega y Gasset