Life is a series of collisions with the future. Jose Ortega y Gasset More Quotes by Jose Ortega y Gasset More Quotes From Jose Ortega y Gasset This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State, that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long run sustains, nourishes, and impels human destinies. Jose Ortega y Gasset destinyrunningcivilization Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do. Jose Ortega y Gasset excellencemenmean Imagine for a moment that each one of us takes only a little more care for each hour of his days, that he demands in it a little more of elegance and intensity; then, multiplying all these minute pressures toward the perfecting and deepening of each life by all the others, calculate for yourselves the gigantic enrichment, the fabulous ennobling which this process would create for human society. Jose Ortega y Gasset fabulousperfectionlittles Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being. Jose Ortega y Gasset pilgrimagelimitsmen The hunter is the alert man. But this itself-life as complete alertness-is the attitude in which the animal exists in the jungle. Jose Ortega y Gasset animalattitudemen These are the only genuine ideas, the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. Jose Ortega y Gasset farcegenuineideas We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create. Jose Ortega y Gasset successtimebelieve 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 europegivingmen To be free means to be lacking in constitutive identity... Jose Ortega y Gasset lackingidentitymean To live is to feel oneself lost. Jose Ortega y Gasset oneselflostfeels The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man Jose Ortega y Gasset metaphorpowermen Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilised world Jose Ortega y Gasset menbelievereality It would be a piece of ingenuousness to accuse the man of today of his lack of moral code. The accusation would leave him cold, or rather, would flatter him. Immoralism has become a commonplace, and anybody and everybody boasts of practising it. Jose Ortega y Gasset pieceswould-bemen 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 generositydeterminationenemy He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new truth. Jose Ortega y Gasset honestyteachingtruth We cannot put off living until we are ready. Jose Ortega y Gasset readyinspirational-life Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort. Jose Ortega y Gasset effortpowercivilization We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfection upon another person. One day, the fantasy evaporates and with it, love dies. Jose Ortega y Gasset valentinefalling-in-lovesarcastic This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and, therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child. Jose Ortega y Gasset mentwochildren For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great. Jose Ortega y Gasset small-thingslittle-thingspersons
