George Santayana

1863–1952 · Spanish-born American philosopher, essayist & poet

George Santayana (born Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana in Madrid) was a philosopher, essayist and poet who wrote entirely in English and taught at Harvard before settling in Europe. His Soliloquies in England (1922) collected reflections written in Britain during and just after the First World War. He is also the source of the far more famous aphorism “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

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“Only the dead have seen the end of war”

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