It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.
Interpretation
Our true worth comes from our understanding and knowledge rather than our actions alone.
George Santayana's quote emphasizes that the value of a person is derived not from their deeds, but from their comprehension and insight into themselves and the world. It highlights the importance of knowledge and self-awareness in establishing dignity and self-worth, suggesting that intellectual understanding is more vital than mere actions.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the importance of lifelong learning.
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 man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.
Your value should not be determined by how somebody else has treated you.
You're worth something because God says you're worth something-not because of what people think or say about you.
If you are offended by reading views that disagree with yours, then yes, you will be offended. However, it is not gratuitously offensive, it simply puts an argument, and if your views are strong enough, as I believe they are, you will be able to defend your views. You will not say, "Oh, it's offensive, it's offensive." You will say "No, you are wrong here and you are wrong here," and that's what you should do.
In idling, the motor's running, but you're letting your mind take in anything. Things pop into it. Those are the gifts of subterranean conscious.
Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires - disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
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