It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Great institutions often operate on routine and human flaws rather than pure thought or intention.
George Santayana's quote reflects on the nature of large organizations and institutions, suggesting that their operations are primarily influenced by habitual routines, human errors, and self-serving behaviors, rather than by high-level thinking or careful planning. This implies a critique of how institutional actions can often be misguided or inefficient, showcasing the limitations imposed by human nature.
Themes
InstitutionsHuman NatureRoutineThoughtErrors
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on organizational behavior, one might quote Santayana to illustrate how human flaws impact institutional efficiency.
More from George Santayana
All quotes βThere 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.
George SantayanaRead
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.
George SantayanaRead
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.
George SantayanaRead
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.
George SantayanaRead
All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.
George SantayanaRead
Similar quotes
Do not fear death, but welcome it, since it too comes from nature. For just as we are young and grow old, and flourish and reach maturity, have teeth and a beard and grey hairs, conceive, become pregnant, and bring forth new life, and all the other natural processes that follow the seasons of our existence, so also do we have death. A thoughtful person will never take death lightly, impatiently, or scornfully, but will wait for it as one of life's natural processes.
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Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.
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Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar
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I did not volunteer for the Waffen SS, but was, as were thousands of my year group, conscripted. I did not then know as a 17-year-old that it was a criminal unit. I thought it was an elite unit.
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Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.
Upton SinclairRead
The Bat that flits at close of Eve_x000D_ _x000D_ Has left the Brain that won't believe._x000D_ _x000D_ The Owl that calls upon the Night_x000D_ _x000D_ Speaks the Unbeliever's fright.
William BlakeRead