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-- Sir Edmund Hillary

Jose Ortega Y Gasset Quotes

Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.


To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.


Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort.


Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.


We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.


Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.


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.


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.


By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.


Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.


The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man.