Benedetto Croce

Benedetto Croce (25 February 1866–20 November 1952) was an Italian idealist philosopher, historian, and occasionally also politician.

Quotes

 * All history is contemporary history.


 * Poetry is produced not by the mere caprice of pleasure, but by natural necessity. It is the primary activity of the human mind.
 * Benedetto Croce, The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico. trans. R. G. Collingwood, London 1923.


 * Language is articulated, limited sound organized for the purpose of expression.
 * Benedetto Croce, quoted in: Geza Revesz, The Origins and Prehistory of Language, London 1956. p. 126

Quotes about Benedetto Croce

 * The mere economic action, the satisfaction of our immediate pleasure, though it satisfies us in relation to our individual end, yet it leaves constantly unsatisfied that which we are beside and beyond our individual determinations, our deepest and truest being. And this dissatisfaction will last until we succeed in lifting ourselves above the infinite succession of individual ends, and in inserting in them a universal value. This passage or conversion from the purely economic to the ethic, from pleasure to duty, is designed by Croce as the conquest of that peace which is not of a fabulous future, but of the present and real: in every instant is eternity, to him who knows how to reach it. Our actions will be always new, because always new problems are put before us by the course of reality; but in them, if we accomplish them with a pure heart, seeking in them what lifts them above themselves, we shall each time possess the Whole. Such is the character of the moral action...
 * Raffaello Piccoli, Benedetto Croce: An Introduction to His Philosophy (1922)