It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George SantayanaRead
Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.
Interpretation
Humans often create ideals of heaven and hell, only to realize they do not live up to their expectations.
George Santayana's quote suggests that people have obsessively imagined concepts of heaven and hell, only to discover that the idea of heaven may be dull and uninspiring, while hell seems absurd and laughable. This speaks to the human tendency to idealize and create narratives that may not align with reality, emphasizing the irony in our desires and the futility of our extreme conceptualizations of existence.
In practice
During a philosophical debate on the meaning of life, this quote can illustrate the complexities of human beliefs.
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 problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present.
Feminism... I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.'
You know something I could really do without? The Space Shuttle. ... It's irresponsible. The last thing we should be doing is sending our grotesquely distorted DNA out into space.
A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul.
To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.
When the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence over the interests of people. What we are experiencing might best be described as a case of money colonizing life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions and purpose should be considered nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal insanity.
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