# José Ortega y Gasset's most famous quotes

'I am I and my circumstance' and other lines by José Ortega y Gasset, from Meditations on Quixote, Invertebrate Spain and The Revolt of the Masses, with the work they come from (and one or two attributed).

- 400 votes · 10 items
- Jul 2, 2019 · saltatemporada
- https://even.best/en/l/4640/jose-ortega-y-gasset-s-most-famous-quotes

## Top 10

1. **I am I and my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I do not save myself.** (50 · ▲53 ▼3) — Meditations on Quixote (1914).
2. **Between wanting to be and believing one already is lies the distance from the tragic to the comic.** (34 · ▲40 ▼6) — Meditations on Quixote (1914).
3. **The vulgar soul, knowing itself vulgar, has the nerve to assert the right to vulgarity and impose it everywhere.** (34 · ▲39 ▼5) — The Revolt of the Masses (1930).
4. **I am convinced that speaking is a far more illusory operation than is usually believed.** (33 · ▲39 ▼6) — The Revolt of the Masses, 'Prologue for French readers' (1937).
5. **Some people know how to live like sleepwalkers. I have never managed to learn that comfortable style of existence.** (24 · ▲31 ▼7) — Invertebrate Spain, preface to the fourth edition.
6. **Morality is man's very being when he is on his own hinges and at his vital best.** (22 · ▲30 ▼8) — Complete Works, volume IV.
7. **I do not ask for Spain to be organised for reasons of the past, but for reasons of the future.** (21 · ▲31 ▼10) — Invertebrate Spain (1921).
8. **A piece of stupidity can only be refuted with another.** (21 · ▲27 ▼6) — Attributed; in Luis Señor's Diccionario de citas (1997).
9. **Studying is something constitutively contradictory and false. The student is a forgery of a man.** (13 · ▲21 ▼8) — Some Lessons in Metaphysics (course of 1932-33).
10. **Whenever you teach, teach at the same time to doubt what you teach.** (12 · ▲21 ▼9) — Attributed; found in dictionaries of quotations.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.