It is not obligatory for a generation to have great men. Jose Ortega y Gasset More Quotes by Jose Ortega y Gasset More Quotes From Jose Ortega y Gasset To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat. Jose Ortega y Gasset firmheavyhands The common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice. Jose Ortega y Gasset menbelievethinking There are, above all, times in which the human reality, always mobile, accelerates, and bursts into vertiginous speeds. Our time is such a one, for it is made of descent and fall. Jose Ortega y Gasset speedrealityfall Man is a fugitive from nature. Jose Ortega y Gasset fugitivehuntingmen [I]t is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success. Jose Ortega y Gasset rootsmencivilization That Marxism should triumph in Russia, where there is no industry, would be the greatest contradiction that Marxism could undergo. But there is no such contradiction, for there is no such triumph. Russia is Marxist more or less as the Germans of the Holy Roman Empire were Romans. Jose Ortega y Gasset triumphrussiawould-be The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the café. Jose Ortega y Gasset lawgivingbelieve Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world. Jose Ortega y Gasset magicmenart Life is fired at us point blank. Jose Ortega y Gasset blanklife-islife The trend towards pure art betrays not arrogance, as is often thought, but modesty. Art that has rid itself of human pathos is a thing without consequence. Jose Ortega y Gasset trendsarroganceart Man must not only make himself: the weightiest thing he has to do is to determine what he is going to be. He is causa sui to the second power. Jose Ortega y Gasset determinemen I am free by compulsion, whether I wish to be or not. Jose Ortega y Gasset compulsionwish 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. Jose Ortega y Gasset skillsgivingthinking History is the science of people. Jose Ortega y Gasset historypeople 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. Jose Ortega y Gasset empiresuprisingminorities [T]he mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State. Jose Ortega y Gasset menbelievecountry The well being of democracies regardless of their type and status is dependent on one small technical detail: The right to vote. Everything else is secondary. Jose Ortega y Gasset detailsdemocracyfreedom Whoever has not felt the danger of our times palpitating under his hand, has not really penetrated to the vitals of destiny, he has merely pricked the surface. Jose Ortega y Gasset destinydangerhands 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. Jose Ortega y Gasset linesmaypast 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 societyhatredclass
