"Liberal philosophy, at this point, ceases to be empirical and British in order to become German and transcendental. Moral life, it now believes, is not the pursuit of liberty and happiness of all sorts by all sorts of different creatures; it is the development of a single spirit in all life through a series of necessary phases, each higher than the preceding one. No man, accordingly, can really or ultimately desire anything but what the best people desire. This is the principle of the higher snobbery; and in fact, all earnest liberals are higher snobs."
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AphoristsNovelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesPoets from the United States19th-century poets from the United States
Original Language: English
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The Irony of Liberalism
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana
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