1883-1955, Spanish Essayist, Philosopher
A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Revolutions and Revolutionaries]
An ''unemployed'' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Unemployment]
An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Ideas]
Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Genius]
Biography is: a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Biography]
By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Definition]
Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Force]
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Effort]
Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Excellence]
For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Things and Little Things]
I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Environmentalism]
I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Politicians and Politics]
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 – [Chaos]
Liberalism — it is well to recall this today — is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Liberals]
Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries. Only in proportion as we are desirous of living more do we really live.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Life and Living]
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 – [Life and Living]
Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Life and Living]
Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Inferiority]
Stupefaction, when it persists, becomes stupidity.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Surprises]
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset – [Commonplace]