Savater termina un antiguo artículo sobre la laicidad que yo acabo de leer y colgar en el otro blog con una frase de George (Jorge para los amigos) Santayana, que sé que es uno de sus referentes:

"No hay tiranía peor que la de una conciencia retrógrada o fanática que oprime a un mundo que no entiende en nombre de otro mundo que es inexistente".


He buscado un poquito y he encontrado algunas otras grandes frases suyas:

"That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions."

"That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject."

"... when men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different."

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."

"Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer."

"So I believe, compulsorily and satirically, in the existence of this absurd world; but as to the existence of a better world, or of hidden reason in this one, I am incredulous, or rather, I am critically sceptical; because it is not difficult to see the familiar motives that lead men to invent such myths."

"Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled."

".. I wish to mourn perpetually the absence of what I love or might love. Isn't that what religious people call the love of God?"

"Life is a succession of second bests."

"Of course, I like agreement, it warms the heart, but I don't expect it; and I like disagreement too, when it is intelligent and carries a thought further, rather than contradicts it a priori, from a different point of departure. These different points of departure make discussion futile and unpleasant."

"A man's hatred of his own condition no more helps to improve it than hatred of other people tends to improve them."

"What establishes superstitions is haste to understand, rash confidence in the moral intelligibility of things."

"To be happy, even to conceive happiness, you must be reasonable or (if Nietzsche prefers the word) you must be tamed. You must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passions and learned your place in the world and what things in it can really serve you. To be happy you must be wise."

“The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.”

"Wealth is dismal and poverty cruel unless both are festive. There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."

"But since, as a matter of fact, birth and death, actually occur, and our brief career is surrounded by vacancy, it is far better to live in the light of the tragic fact, rather than to forget or deny it, and build everything on a fundamental lie."

"... only the dead have seen the end of war."

"Spirituality, then, lies in regarding existence merely as a vehicle for contemplation, and contemplation merely as a vehicle for joy."

"There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humour."