Frases de José Ortega Y Gasset

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“Desconfio do respeito de um homem com seu amigo ou sua bandeira quando não o vejo respeitar o inimigo ou a bandeira deste.”

“A beleza que seduz poucas vezes coincide com a beleza que faz apaixonar.”

“Muitos homens, como as crianças, querem uma coisa, mas não as suas consequências.”

“A civilização avançada envolve problemas árduos. Por isso, quanto maior o progresso, mais está ameaçada. A vida está cada vez melhor; porém, evidentemente, cada vez mais complicada.”

“Se ensinares, ensina ao mesmo tempo a duvidar daquilo que estás a ensinar.”

“A vida é uma série de colisões com o futuro, não é uma soma do que temos sido, e sim do que desejamos ser.”

“Quem, em nome da liberdade, renuncia a ser aquilo que devia ser, já se matou em vida: é um suicida de pé. A sua existência consistirá numa perpétua fuga da única realidade que era possível.”

“O mundo é o repertório das nossas possibilidades vitais. Não é, pois, algo à parte e alheio à nossa vida, mas é a sua autêntica periferia.”

“A cultura é uma necessidade imprescindível de toda uma vida, é uma dimensão constitutiva da existência humana, como as mãos são um atributo do homem.”

“Observai os que vos rodeiam e vereis como avançam perdidos na vida; vão como sonâmbulos, em sua boa ou má sorte, sem ter a mais leve suspeita daquilo que lhes acontece. Ouvireis como falam em fórmulas taxativas sobre si mesmos e sobre o seu entorno, o que indicaria que possuem idéias sobre tudo isso. Porém, si analisásseis sumariamente essas idéias, notaríeis que não refletem muito nem pouco a realidade a que parecem referir-se, e se aprofundásseis mais na análise acharíeis que nem sequer pretendem ajustar-se a tal realidade. Antes o contrário: o indivíduo trata com elas de interceptar a sua própria visão do real, de sua vida mesma. Porque a vida é o caos no qual se está perdido. O homem o suspeita: porém o assusta encontrar-se cara a cara com essa terrível realidade, e procura oculta-la com uma cortina fantasmagórica onde tudo está muito claro. Não lhe importa que suas 'idéias" não sejam verdadeiras; emprega-as como trincheiras para defender-se de sua vida, como instrumentos para afugentar a realidade”

“Foi preciso esperar até o começo do século XX para se presenciar um espectáculo incrível: o da peculiarísssima brutalidade e agressiva estupidez com que se comporta um homem quando sabe muito de uma coisa e ignora todas as demais.”

“Não é a fome, mas, pelo contrário, a abundância, o excesso de energias, que provocam a guerra.”

“É imoral pretender que uma coisa desejada se realize magicamente, simplesmente porque a desejamos. Só é moral o desejo acompanhado da severa vontade de prover os meios da sua execução.”

“A ciência consiste em substituir o saber que parecia seguro por uma teoria, ou seja, por algo problemático.”

“No fundo de qualquer capricho há a secreta vontade de aprender algo de sério.”

“Contrariamente ao que creem os chorões, todo o erro é uma propriedade que acresce o nosso haver. Em vez de chorar sobre ele, convém apressar-se em aproveitá-lo.”

“Sem missão não há homem.”

“A lei seca da arte é esta: 'Ne quid nimis', nada além do necessário. Tudo o que é supérfluo, tudo aquilo que podemos suprimir sem alterar a essência é contrário à existência da beleza.”

“Sempre que ensinares, ensina a duvidarem do que estiveres ensinando.”

“O importante é a lembrança dos erros, que nos permite não cometer sempre os mesmos. O verdadeiro tesouro do homem é o tesouro dos seus erros, a larga experiência vital decantada por milênios, gota a gota.”

“Pouco se pode esperar de alguém que só se esforça quando tem a certeza de vir a ser recompensado.”

“Liderar não é tanto uma questão de mão pesada mas mais de assento firme.”

“Diga-me para o que tu dás tua atenção, e eu te direi quem és.”

“Pensar é o acto de capturar a realidade por meio das ideias.”

“A revolução não é a sublevação contra a ordem preexistente, mas a implantação de uma nova ordem que vira a tradicional pelo avesso.”

“O jovem não precisa de razões para viver; precisa só de pretextos.”

“À leitura deslizante ou horizontal, um simples patinar mental, é preciso substituir pela leitura vertical, a imersão no pequeno abismo que é cada palavra, fértil mergulho sem escafandro.”

“Rancor é uma evidente manifestação de sentimento de inferioridade.”

“O amor vive do pormenor e procede microscopicamente.”

“O que não é destino é frivolidade.”

“Não se pode dizer que o poeta persiga a verdade, visto que a cria.”

“Não é tão fácil como se crê ser um egoísta puro, e ninguém, sendo-o, alguma vez triunfou.”

“O prazer estético deve ser um prazer inteligente.”

“Cultura é o sistema de ideias vivas que cada época possui. Melhor: o sistema de ideias das quais o tempo vive.”

“Contrariamente ao que supõe uma óptica inocente e folhetinesca, o poder não é tanto uma questão de punhos quanto de nádegas.”

“Podemos pretender ser quanto queiramos; mas não é lícito fingir que somos o que não somos.”

“Nas revoluções, a abstracção tenta sublevar-se contra o real: por isso o fracasso é consubstancial às revoluções.”

“Eis ao que leva o intervencionismo do Estado: o povo converte-se em carne e massa que alimenta o simples artefacto e máquina que é o Estado.”

“Civilização é, antes de mais nada, vontade de convivência.”

“Em vez de pintar coisas puseram-se a pintar ideias.”

“O que distingue um grande poeta é o facto dele nos dizer algo que ninguém ainda disse, mas que não é novo para nós.”

“Em épocas de grande agitação o dever do intelectual é manter-se calado, pois nessas ocasiões é preciso mentir e o intelectual não tem esse direito.”

“O exagero é sempre a exageração de algo que não o é.”

“A pior das crises é a crise do dicionário.”

“[T]he direction of society has been taken over by a type of man who is not interested in the principles of civilisation. Not of this or that civilisation but — from what we can judge to-day — of any civilisation. …[T]he type of man dominant to-day is a primitive one, a Naturmensch rising up in the midst of a civilised world.”

“Similarly a work of art vanishes from sight for a beholder who seeks in it nothing but the moving fate of John and Mary or Tristan and Isolde and adjusts his vision to this. Tristan's sorrows are sorrows and can evoke compassion only in so far as they are taken as real. But an object of art is artistic only in so far as it is not real. In order to enjoy Titian's portrait of Charles the Fifth on horseback we must forget that this is Charles the Fifth in person and see instead a portrait — that is, an image, a fiction. The portrayed person and his portrait are two entirely different things; we are interested in either one or the other. In the first case we "live" with Charles the Fifth, in the second we look at an object of art.”

“I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.”

“The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written (here a word that there is no need to write) where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring to light another form of rhetoric which hitherto lay hidden in the latrines.”

“When all these things are lacking there is no culture; there is in the strictest sense of the word, barbarism. And let us not deceive ourselves, this is what is beginning to appear in Europe under the progressive rebellion of the masses. The traveller who arrives in a barbarous country knows that in that territory there are no ruling principles to which it is possible to appeal. Properly speaking, there are no barbarian standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.”

“That science is incapable of solving in its own way those fundamental questions is no sufficient reason for slighting them”

“Whatever be the substance which takes possession of such a soul, it will produce the same result, and will change into a pretext for not conforming to any concrete purpose. If it appears as reactionary or anti-liberal it will be in order to affirm that the salvation of the State gives a right to level down all other standards, and to manhandle one's neighbour, above all if one's neighbour is an outstanding personality. But the same happens if it decides to act the revolutionary; the apparent enthusiasm for the manual worker, for the afflicted and for social justice, serves as a mask to facilitate the refusal of all obligations, such as courtesy, truthfulness and, above all, respect or esteem for superior individuals. … As regards other kinds of Dictatorship, we have seen only too well how they flatter the mass-man, by trampling on everything that appeared to be above the common level.”

“Is it not altogether absurd that, under actual circumstances, the average man does not feel spontaneously, and without being preached at, an ardent enthusiasm for those sciences and the related ones of biology?… Every day furnishes a new invention which this average man utilises. Every day produces a new anesthetic or vaccine from which this average man benefits. … How is it, nevertheless, that there is no sign of the masses imposing on themselves any sacrifice of money or attention in order to endow science more worthily? Far from this being the case, the post-war period has converted the man of science into a new social pariah.”

“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?”

“Man must not only make himself: the weightiest thing he has to do is to determine what he is going to be. He is causa sui to the second power.”

“Meditation on any theme, if positive and honest, inevitably separates him who does the meditating from the opinion prevailing around him, from that which … can be called “public” or “popular” opinion.”

“This fighting-shy of every obligation partly explains the phenomenon, half ridiculous, half disgraceful, Of the setting-up in our days of the platform of "youth" as youth. … In comic fashion people call themselves "young," because they have heard that youth has more rights than obligations, since it can put off the fulfilment of these latter to the Greek Kalends of maturity. …[T]he astounding thing at present is that these take it as an effective right precisely in order to claim for themselves all those other rights which only belong to the man who has already done something.”

“The species with eyes appears suddenly, capriciously as it were, and it is this species which changes the environment by creating its visible aspect. The eye does not come into being because it is needed. Just the contrary; because the eye appears it can henceforth be applied as a serviceable instrument. Each species builds up its stock of useful habits by selecting among, and taking advantage of, the innumerable useless actions which a living being performs out of sheer exuberance.”

“Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is "mass" or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself — good or ill — based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.”

“[I]s this not an advantage? Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests.”

“The primary meaning of the words "modern," "modernity," with which recent times have baptised themselves, brings out very sharply that feeling of "the height of time" which I am at present analysing. "Modern" is what is "in the fashion, "that is to say, the new fashion or modification which has arisen over against the old traditional fashions used in the past. The word "modern" then expresses a consciousness of a new life, superior to the old one, and at the same time an imperative call to be at the height of one's time. For the "modern" man, not to be "modern" means to fall below the historic level.”

“The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic "ideas" and looks life in the face, realises that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. As this is the simple truth — that to live is to feel oneself lost — he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life.”

“[L]ife, individual or collective, personal or historic, is the one entity in the universe whose substance is compact of danger, of adventure. It is, in the strict sense of the word, drama. … [T]he primary, radical meaning of life appears when it is employed in the sense not of biology, but of biography. For the very strong reason that the whole of biology is quite definitely only a chapter in certain biographies, it is what biologists do in the portion of their lives open to biography.”

“Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo — or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role?”

“The history of the Roman Empire is also the history of the uprising of the Empire of the Masses, who absorb and annul the directing minorities and put themselves in their place. Then, also, is produced the phenomenon of agglomeration, of "the full." For that reason, as Spengler has very well observed, it was necessary, just as in our day, to construct enormous buildings. The epoch of the masses is the epoch of the colossal.”

“I think that the philosopher must, for his own purposes, carry methodological strictness to an extreme when he is investigating and pursuing his truths, but when he is ready to enunciate them and give them out, he ought to avoid the cynical skill with which some scientists, like a Hercules at the fair, amuse themselves by displaying to the public the biceps of their technique.”

“Life is fired at us point blank.”

“It is not that one ought not to do just what one pleases; it is simply that one cannot do other than what each of us has to do, has to be. The only way out is to refuse to do what has to be done, but this does not set us free to do something else just because it pleases us. In this matter we only possess a negative freedom of will, a noluntas.”

“Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.”