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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
ChaosOrderConfusionUnderstandingPerception
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the unpredictable nature of life, one might quote this to illustrate the complexities involved.
More from George Santayana
All quotes βThe 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.
George SantayanaRead
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.
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
Similar quotes
No, no, one can imagine nothing in the world, not the least thing. Everything is composed of so many isolated details that are not to be foreseen. In one's imagining one passes over them and hasty as one is doesn't notice that they are missing. But realities are slow and indescribably detailed.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
Where there is no free agency, there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue. Where the routine is rigorously proscribed by law, the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct.
William H. PrescottRead
If men are wont to play with swearing anywhere, can we expect they should be serious and strict therein at the bar or in the church.
Isaac BarrowRead
Right from the moment of our birth, we are under the care and kindness of our parents, and then later on in our life when we are oppressed by sickness and become old, we are again dependent on the kindness of others. Since at the beginning and end of our lives we are so dependent on other's kindness, how can it be in the middle that we would neglect kindness towards others?
Dalai LamaRead
I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better, I began to think of it as rivers.
Charles KuraltRead
Revenge is a common passion; it is the sin of the uninstructed. The savage deems it noble;but the religion of Christ, which is the sublime civilizer, emphatically condemns it. Why? Because religion ever seeks to ennoble man; and nothing so debases him as revenge.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1St Baron LyttonRead