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 GassetThe 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 GassetThe 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 GassetEvery life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been.
Jose Ortega y GassetThe metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. All our faculties keep us within the realm of the real, of what is already there. The most we can do is to combine things or break them up. The metaphor alone furnishes an escape; between the real things, it lets emerge imaginary reefs, a crop of floating islands.
Jose Ortega y Gasset