Often quoted but never cited...

February 27, 2006 12:57 PM

Does anyone know the source for the following quote by George Santayana: "Americans love junk; it's not the junk that bothers me, it's the love"?
posted by jacknose to Religion & Philosophy (5 answers total)

The only cite I can find for it on Google Books is in an anthology of pieces from the Baffler: cite. If that's where you saw it as well, I'm guessing misquote and/or misattribution.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 1:40 PM on February 27, 2006

I suspect it's apocryphal. I don't even find it to be oft-quoted, really: most of its appearances on the web are copies of or excerpts from the same article.

I can't find it in a few quotation books I checked, and I find nothing in a cursory search of Santayana's works online.
posted by mmoncur at 2:03 PM on February 27, 2006

That 1997 "Baffler" book is listed as a citation by at least one of the few web sources that weren't quoting the New Atlantis article. It's probably where all of the (misquoted) citations started.
posted by mmoncur at 2:05 PM on February 27, 2006

That's definitely not Santayana, and I find it hard to believe anyone seriously expected people to believe it is.
posted by languagehat at 2:35 PM on February 27, 2006

Certainly does not sound like George Santayana at all.
posted by madstop1 at 7:40 PM on February 27, 2006