George Santayana (1863-1952)
Born in Spain to atheist parents, Santayana was sent to Catholic schools. He came to the United States at the age of nine, attended Boston Latin School and Harvard University, earning a Ph.D. in philosophy and joined the faculty. In the first decade of the twentieth century, he came to be regarded as one of the nation's foremost philosophers, and wrote surpassingly in many fields.
Travelling after being appointed a full professor at Harvard, he resigned on a whim, and settled in Europe, never to return to America.
His elder years were lived in Rome until his death at 88. He was buried, at his request, in Rome's Catholic Cemetery, in a section reserved for Spaniards.
Santayana on Religion
"My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety toward the universe
and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be
servants of their human interests."
On My Friendly Critics," Soliloquies in England, 1922
"Faith in the supernatural is a desparate wager made by man at the
lowest ebb of his fortunes."
"Supernaturalism," Little Essays, No. 108
"Each religion...necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts
itself...Religions, like languages, are necessary rivals. What
religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much
as what language he shall speak.
"Supernaturalism," Little Essays, No. 23
"Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it
from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may
be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair."
Character and Opinion in the United States. 1920
"Religion is the natural reaction of the imagination when confronted by the difficulties in a
truculent world."
Atlantic Monthly, 1953
"The Bible is literature, not dogma."
Introduction to the Ethics of Spinoza, 1910
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
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