"The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer"
About this Quote
Santayana’s joke lands because it flips our usual hierarchy of effort into a hierarchy of patience. “Difficult” and “Impossible” aren’t measurements of the task; they’re measurements of our tolerance for delay. By defining the impossible as merely “a little longer,” he punctures the melodrama we attach to obstacles and exposes a quieter culprit: our preference for instant payoff dressed up as realism.
The line is engineered like a philosophical one-liner. It offers the comfort of pragmatism (start now; the hard part is manageable) while smuggling in a critique of the modern mind: we declare things “impossible” when they refuse to submit to immediate execution. The subtext is less motivational-poster and more indictment. If the impossible is only a time horizon, then the barrier isn’t nature or fate so much as attention, endurance, and will.
Context matters. Santayana lived through rapid industrial acceleration and the early 20th century’s confidence in progress, alongside its disillusionments. His work often warns against mistaking moods for truths and slogans for thinking. Here, he’s deflating the rhetoric of impossibility that institutions, ideologies, and individuals deploy to avoid responsibility. “A little longer” is deliberately understated, almost sly, implying that what we call impossible is frequently just what we don’t want to pay for in sustained effort.
It’s also a jab at philosophical grandstanding. If you’re serious about ideas, you test them over time. If you’re serious about change, you stay with it past the point where novelty wears off.
The line is engineered like a philosophical one-liner. It offers the comfort of pragmatism (start now; the hard part is manageable) while smuggling in a critique of the modern mind: we declare things “impossible” when they refuse to submit to immediate execution. The subtext is less motivational-poster and more indictment. If the impossible is only a time horizon, then the barrier isn’t nature or fate so much as attention, endurance, and will.
Context matters. Santayana lived through rapid industrial acceleration and the early 20th century’s confidence in progress, alongside its disillusionments. His work often warns against mistaking moods for truths and slogans for thinking. Here, he’s deflating the rhetoric of impossibility that institutions, ideologies, and individuals deploy to avoid responsibility. “A little longer” is deliberately understated, almost sly, implying that what we call impossible is frequently just what we don’t want to pay for in sustained effort.
It’s also a jab at philosophical grandstanding. If you’re serious about ideas, you test them over time. If you’re serious about change, you stay with it past the point where novelty wears off.
Quote Details
| Topic | Perseverance |
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