Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo was a Galician diplomat, writer, historian, and pacifist.De Madariaga graduated with a degree in engineering in Paris, France. He then went to work as an engineer for the Northern Spanish Railway Company but abandoned this work to return to London and become a journalist, writing in English, for The Times. At this time, he began publishing his first essays. He became a press member of the Secretariat of the League of Nations in 1921, and chief of the Disarmament Section in 1922. In 1928, he was appointed Professor of Spanish at Oxford University for three years, during which time he wrote a book on nation psychology called Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards.In 1931, he was appointed ambassador to the United States of America and a permanent delegate to the League of Nations, a post he kept for 5 years. Chairing the Council of the League of Nations in January 1932, he condemned Japanese aggression in Manchuria in such vehement terms that he was nicknamed "Don Quijote de la Manchuria".[2] Between 1932 and 1934, he was Ambassador to France. In 1933, he was elected to the National Congress, serving as both Minister for Education and Minister for Justice. In July 1936, as a classic liberal he went into exile in England to escape the Spanish civil war. From there he became a vocal opponent of, and organised resistance to, the Nacionales and the Spanish State of Francisco Franco. In 1947, he was one of the principal authors of the Oxford Manifesto on liberalism. He participated in the Hague Congress in 1948 as president of the Cultural Commission and he was one of the co-founders, in 1949, of the College of Europe.In his writing career he wrote books and essays about Don Quixote, Christopher Columbus, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and the history of Latin America. He militated in favour of a united and integrated Europe. He wrote in French and German as well as Spanish and Galician (his mother tongue) and English. In 1973 he won the Karlspreis for contributions to the European idea and European peace. In 1976, he returned to Spain after the death of Francisco Franco. The Madariaga European Foundation has been named after him, promoting his vision of a united Europe making for a more peaceful world. The 1979–1980 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour.
Circumstances are the seeds of literature.
Sermons seldom convert sinners they sometimes goad them into more sin.
The three creative prototypes, the scientist, the artist, and the saint, know instinctively, without the help of any mere philosopher, that each must obey an absolute rule of conduct. Three words established and hallowed by usage express the divinities, the values, the supreme aims served respectively by these three kinds of men with an undivided loyalty: truth for the scientist; beauty for the artist; goodness for the saint. The discussion on what these words mean will never end. We must be content with taking note of their clarity as symbols, and of the singular force which animates them and makes of them powerful poles of attraction.
On the one hand, it is in and through creative minds that the community fulfils itself at its best and reaches its highest forms; and on the other, it is from them that the community recovers the social substance with which it had nourished them, transfigured by their creative alchemy into a still higher social substance. The creative evolution of his community and his own creative evolution must always be the two earnest purposes of the individual. Its own creative evolution and that of the individuals in its midst must always be the two earnest purposes of the community.
My knowledge of myself is direct, synthetic, from within outwards; my knowledge of other persons is indirect, analytical, from outside inwards. My knowledge of myself starts at the core; that of others at the crust. .
