It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Absolute optimism is undermined by the presence of any evil, no matter how small.
This quote by George Santayana highlights the fragility of a wholly optimistic perspective when confronted with the reality of evil in the world. It suggests that the existence of negativity or malice can taint our overall view of life, making it difficult to maintain unwavering positivity in the face of harsh truths.
Themes
OptimismEvilPhilosophyRealityNegativity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about the limitations of optimism in psychology.
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
Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.
Aldous HuxleyRead
What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven.
Chuck PalahniukRead
There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedience's taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.
Hannah ArendtRead
Do no harmful actions, do not become attached to the cycle of death and rebirth, show kindness, respect the old and have compassion for the young, do not have a heart that rejects or a heart that covets and have no worry or sadness in your heart. This is what is called enlightenment. Do not seek it elsewhere.
DogenRead
Sometimes you get the cynical person saying, 'Do we really need another book set in Nazi Germany?' But I think you just have to ask, 'Is this a story worth telling?'
Markus ZusakRead
It could be ventured to understand obsessive compulsive neurosis as the pathological counterpart of religious development, to define neurosis as an individual religiosity; to define religion as a universal obsessive compulsive neurosis.
Sigmund FreudRead