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The assurance that we have no means of answering [final] questions is no valid excuse for callousness towards them. The more deeply should we feel, down to the roots of our being, their pressure and their sting. Whose hunger has ever been [sated] with the knowledge that he could not eat?

— José Ortega y Gasset History as a System (1962)

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More quotes by José Ortega y Gasset

Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us — by obligations, not by rights.

The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

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.

The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

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.

History as a System (1962)

Nationalism is always an effort in a direction opposite to that of the principle which creates nations. The former is exclusive in tendency, the latter inclusive.

The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: José Ortega y Gasset (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.