List of Jose Ortega y Gasset Quotes

I Think That The Philosopher Must, For His Own Purposes, Carry Methodological Strictness To An Extreme When He Is Investigating And Pursuing His Truths, But When He Is Ready To Enunciate Them And Give Them Out, He Ought To Avoid The Cynical Skill With Which Some Scientists, Like A Hercules At The Fair, Amuse Themselves By Displaying To The Public The Biceps Of Their Technique.

The Surrealist Thinks He Has Outstripped The Whole Of Literary History When He Has Written (here A Word That There Is No Need To Write) Where Others Have Written "jasmines, Swans And Fauns." But What He Has Really Done Has Been Simply To Bring To Light Another Form Of Rhetoric Which Hitherto Lay Hidden In The Latrines.

The Nineteenth Century, Utilitarian Throughout, Set Up A Utilitarian Interpretation Of The Phenomenon Of Life Which Has Come Down To Us And May Still Be Considered As The Commonplace Of Everyday Thinking. ... An Innate Blindness Seems To Have Closed The Eyes Of This Epoch To All But Those Facts Which Show Life As A Phenomenon Of Utility

Human Vitality Is So Exuberant That In The Sorriest Desert It Still Finds A Pretext For Glowing And Trembling.

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.

Triumph Cannot Help Being Cruel.

Liberalism... Is The Noblest Cry That Has Ever Resounded In This Planet.

The History Of The Roman Empire Is Also The History Of The Uprising Of The Empire Of The Masses, Who Absorb And Annul The Directing Minorities And Put Themselves In Their Place. Then, Also, Is Produced The Phenomenon Of Agglomeration, Of "the Full." For That Reason, As Spengler Has Very Well Observed, It Was Necessary, Just As In Our Day, To Construct Enormous Buildings. The Epoch Of The Masses Is The Epoch Of The Colossal.

The Truth Is That No Horizon Is Especially Interesting By Itself, By Virtue Of Its Peculiar Content, And That Any Horizon, Wide Or Narrow, Brilliant Or Dull, Varied Or Monotonous, May Possess An Interest Of Its Own Which Merely Requires A Vital Adjustment To Be Discovered.

The World Is The Sum-total Of Our Vital Possibilities.

In This Initial Illimitableness Of Possibilities That Characterizes One Who Has No Nature There Stands Out Only One Fixed, Pre-established, And Given Line By Which He May Chart His Course, Only One Limit: The Past.

Every Intellectual Effort Sets Us Apart From The Commonplace, And Leads Us By Hidden And Difficult Paths To Secluded Spots Where We Find Ourselves Amid Unaccustomed Thoughts.