Logic is one thing, the human animal another. You can quite easily propose a logical solution to something and at the same time hope in your heart of hearts it won't work out.
Luigi PirandelloRead
A fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Facts need context and emotion to have meaning and relevance.
This quote by Luigi Pirandello suggests that a fact alone is insufficient; it requires the context of reasons and feelings to be truly understood and give it significance. Just as a sack won't stand empty, a fact lacks impact until it is filled with the experiences and motivations that frame it, emphasizing the importance of narrative and emotion in our understanding of facts.
Themes
FactContextEmotionMeaningUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about climate change, one might quote Pirandello to emphasize the need for emotional narratives alongside scientific facts.
More from Luigi Pirandello
All quotes βWe're like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for someone to come and move us or make us talk.
Luigi PirandelloRead
Woe to him who doesn't know how to wear his mask, be he king or pope!
Luigi PirandelloRead
THE FATHER: But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here? In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.
Luigi PirandelloRead
Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!
Luigi PirandelloRead
Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time.
Luigi PirandelloRead
Similar quotes
Every church that has a standard higher than human welfare is dangerous.
Robert Green IngersollRead
Were it part of our everyday education and comment that the corporation is an instrument for the exercise of power, that it belongs to the process by which we are governed, there would then be debate on how that power is used and how it might be made subordinate to the public will and need. This debate is avoided by propagating the myth that the power does not exist.
John Kenneth GalbraithRead
How characteristic of your perverse heart that longs only for what happens to be out of reach.
Pierre Choderlos De LaclosRead
In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.
Robert Green IngersollRead
With about a dozen assorted ongoing conflicts in the news every day, and with the stories becoming more horrific, the level of sadness becomes unbearable. And what becomes of our planet when that sadness becomes apathy? Because we feel helpless. And we turn our heads and turn the page.
Eddie VedderRead
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Henry David ThoreauRead