A Quote by George Santayana

One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of feeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.

George Santayana

Quote Topics

Abandoned America Any Bid Bye Change Evidence Feeling Good Good-Bye Ideas Mere New Nowadays Our Predecessors Recent Refute Speculation Them Virtue Without

Quote Author

George Santayana
Spanish - Novelist
December 16, 1863 - September 26, 1952

Hospitality is the key to new ideas, new friends, new possibilities. What we take into our lives changes us. Without new people and new ideas, we are imprisoned inside ourselves.

Joan D. Chittister

What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views. It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.

Diane Ravitch

Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.... for really new ideas of any kind--no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be--there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.

Jane Jacobs

This is a lifetime of good-byes. In our time, we will say good-bye to cherished people, things, and ideas. Eventually, we say good-bye to life itself with our death. Learn to say a good good-bye. Allow yourself to mourn each loss. As with a physical wound, the body has its own schedule for healing. It will tell you when it has healed.

Peter McWilliams

America has the highest standard of living of any major country in the entire world. To maintain and enhance that standard of living, America should continue to embrace those qualities which have made America great: openness and dynamism. Openness to new technologies, new ideas and new people is America's greatest source of strength.

Alex Tabarrok

There is no doubt our earth is warming and our seas rising - or that humankind is the cause. There is no evidence to refute this - or any genuine scientific counterargument in the climate change debate.

Bill Shorten

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

Barack Obama

Though we [Humanists] take a strict position on what constitutes knowledge, we are not critical of the source of ideas. Often intuitive feelings, hunches, speculation, and flashes of inspiration prove to be excellent sources of novel approaches, new ways of looking at things, new discoveries, and new information. We do not disparage those ideas derived from religious experience, altered states of consciousness, or the emotions; we merely declare that testing these ideas against reality is the only way to determine their validity as knowledge.

Fred Edwords

There is this thing called the university, and everybody goes there now. And there are these things called teachers who make students read this book with good ideas or that book with good ideas until that's where we get our ideas. We don't think them; we read them in books. I like Utopian talk, speculation about what our planet should be, anger about what our planet is. I think writers are the most important members of society, not just potentially but actually. Good writers must have and stand by their own ideas.

Kurt Vonnegut

Change life! Change Society! These ideas lose completely their meaning without producing an appropriate space. A lesson to be learned from soviet constructivists from the 1920s and 30s, and of their failure, is that new social relations demand a new space, and vice-versa.

Henri Lefebvre

The left believes that we're an unwarranted, undeserving superpower because we're a racist, bigoted nation from our founding. So Obama presides over America's decline and tells everybody "get used to it. This is the new norm." The new norm is no full-time jobs. The new norm is government getting bigger. The new norm is you having no wage increases for 15 years. This is what the new norm is, as we entered the global marketplace. And the American people don't want any part of that. That's not America.

Rush Limbaugh

One of America's strengths has always been its openness to the new: both new ideas and new people.

Cesar Pelli

Change happens not just by giving the mind new arguments but also by feeding the imagination new beauties

Timothy Keller

The truth is that ideas matter... If we really want to repair what is wrong in our society, it is going to require not just new policies or even new behaviors, but nothing less heroic than new ideas.

Thomas Chatterton Williams

Creativity is dangerous. We cannot open ourselves to new insights without endangering the security of our prior assumptions. We cannot propose new ideas without risking disapproval and rejection.