Aphorisms Galore!

Wisdom and Ignorance

327 aphorisms  ·  10 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/icyaq4sy  ·  submitted 1997

Half a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.

E. B. White, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/lt8nmg5i  ·  submitted 1997

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

H. G. Wells, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/1teeow0f  ·  submitted 1997

Calvin and Hobbes (paperback)

Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.

Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/kteay1fd  ·  submitted 1997

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/hcrgr6oa  ·  submitted 1997

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

Voltaire, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/t9jmvbpa  ·  submitted 1997

A witty saying proves nothing.

Voltaire, in Success and Failure and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/tbra32py  ·  submitted 1997

Use soft words and hard arguments.

Unknown, in Success and Failure and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/bzeqsrni  ·  submitted 1997

Wise men make proverbs; fools repeat them.

Unknown, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/pkfmdhte  ·  submitted 1997

When an ordinary man attains knowledge, he is a sage; when a sage attains knowledge, he is an ordinary man.

Unknown, (Zen saying), in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/kov3nzmi  ·  submitted 1997

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.

Unknown, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/5hbi0ras  ·  submitted 1997

Bravery and stupidity go hand in hand.

David Summers, in Success and Failure and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/tf9fn0vv  ·  submitted 1997

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Socrates, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/svogwyfm  ·  submitted 1997

Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.

Edgard Varese, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/uvmow3r4  ·  submitted 1997

Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.

Mark Van Doren, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/byjgwlzg  ·  submitted 1997

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

Mark Twain, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/hk1fnrrg  ·  submitted 1997

The less you know, the more you think you know, because you don't know you don't know.

Ray Stevens, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/0rczsoyu  ·  submitted 1997

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Herbert Simon, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/3laiwzst  ·  submitted 1997

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

Harry S Truman, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/g8ncpo30  ·  submitted 1997

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody has read.

Mark Twain, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/dkwycxon  ·  submitted 1997

Clear writers assume, with a pessimism born of experience, that whatever isn't plainly stated the reader will invariably misconstrue.

John R. Trimble, in Wisdom and Ignorance