It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.
Interpretation
Chaos is a complex concept that represents a disordered state of affairs that can challenge our understanding.
This quote by George Santayana suggests that what we perceive as chaos is simply a form of order that does not align with our expectations or understanding. It emphasizes the idea that confusion arises when we fail to recognize the underlying patterns or systems that govern seemingly chaotic situations, prompting us to reconsider our perceptions and judgments.
In practice
In a discussion about the unpredictable nature of life, one might quote this to illustrate the complexities involved.
It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colours of life in all their purity.
Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence.
To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.
The vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best chosen words.
The natural state of this universe is attraction; and that is surely followed by an ultimate disunion.
Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.
If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man.
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
If I had not grown up in Nigeria- and if all I knew of Africa were of popular images- I too would think that africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting sensless wars, dying of poverty and aids- unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.
We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.
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