José Ortega y Gasset - Quodid

About

Picture of José Ortega y Gasset

José Ortega y Gasset ( or-TAY-gə; Spanish: [xoˈse oɾˈteɣa j ɣaˈset]; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. His philosophy has been characterized as a "philosophy of life" that comprised "a long-hidden beginning in a pragmatist metaphysics" inspired by William James and with a general method from a realist phenomenology imitating Edmund Husserl, which served both his proto-existentialism (prior to Martin Heidegger's), and his realist historicism, which has been compared to both Wilhelm Dilthey and Benedetto Croce.

Quotes from José Ortega y Gasset

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself. He feels lost amid his own abundance. With more means at its disposal, more knowledge, more techniques than ever, it turns out that the world today goes the same way as the worst of worlds that have been: it simply drifts.

—José Ortega y Gasset

Excellence means when a man or woman asks of himself more than others do.

—José Ortega y Gasset

Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.

—José Ortega y Gasset

I am I plus my surroundings, and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.

—José Ortega y Gasset

We cannot put off living until we are ready.

—José Ortega y Gasset

living procrastination delay

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.

—José Ortega y Gasset

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality… the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

—José Ortega y Gasset

We distinguish the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands upon himself, and the latter who makes no demands on himself.

—José Ortega y Gasset