George Santayana Quotes

Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred.

No convention gets to be a convention at all except by grace of a lot of clever and powerful people first inventing it, and then imposing it on others. You can be pretty sure, if you are strictly conventional, that you are following genius--a long way off. And unless you are a genius yourself, that is a good thing to do.

We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against nature.

The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

Men will sooner surrender their rights than their customs.

Americans are locked into our traditions.

But-! I say! The common conventions of humanity-' 'Are all very well for common people.

Custom is a mutable thing; yet we readily recognize the permanence of certain social values. Graciousness and courtesy are never old-fashioned.

The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.

Society's the mother of convention.

In my day, there were things that were done, and things that were not done, and there was even a way of doing things that were not done.

Conventions are like coins, an easy way of dealing with the commerce of relations.

In most old communities there is a common sense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity.

Man is the child of customs, not the child of his ancestors.

New customs, Though they be never so ridiculous (Nay, let em be unmanly), yet are followed.

Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and lithe, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.

Sometimes we do things a certain way just because that is the way we do things.

Tradition implies authority, conformity, imitation, following.

Custom is custom: it is built of brass, boiler-iron, granite; facts, reasonings, arguments have no more effect upon it than the idle winds have upon Gibraltar.

So, "normal" is really what society dictates as normal and if we're born in that world, we would see that as normal. But if you think about it for a second, is it really?

We make our customs lightly; once made, like our sins, they grip us in bands of steel; we become the creatures of our creation.

If two people want to get married, get married! The Victorians had a great saying: As long as it doesn't scare the horses, do what you want. And I absolutely believe that.

Convention is the ruler of all.

... it is a great mistake to confuse conventionality with simplicity ... it takes a good deal of intelligence and a great many inhibitions to follow a social code.