Aphorisms Galore!

Wisdom and Ignorance

327 aphorisms  ·  10 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/ieyckbys  ·  submitted 1997

A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.

Robert Burton, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/fj2gtz79  ·  submitted 1997

Ignorance is the mother of devotion.

Robert Burton, in Science and Religion and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/satkf7ke  ·  submitted 1997

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Samuel Butler, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/eqpdfyuw  ·  submitted 1997

Good judgement comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgement.

Rita Mae Brown, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/mmclufba  ·  submitted 1997

Less than fifteen percent of the people do any original thinking on any subject... The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think.

Luther Burbank, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/kiytmq1q  ·  submitted 1999 by Erwin van Moll

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors... Perhaps I would have liked to be my father, who wrote but has the decency of not publishing.

Jorge Luis Borges, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/bza7uu5d  ·  submitted 1999 by Erwin van Moll

My advanced age has taught me the resignation of being Borges.

Jorge Luis Borges, "El informe de Brodie", in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/inomue9p  ·  submitted 1999 by Erwin van Moll

There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote", in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/wagakfth  ·  submitted 1999

Learning to shrug is the beginning of wisdom.

Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/ow2rizet  ·  submitted 1998

In order to keep an open mind, I am trying to avoid learning anything.

Ashleigh Brilliant, Brilliant Thoughts (copyright info: www.ashleighbrilliant.com), in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/kl2zmoog  ·  submitted 1997 by Barry Cantor

Today's children are required to learn what most people in former times were forbidden to know.

Ashleigh Brilliant, Brilliant Thoughts (copyright info: www.ashleighbrilliant.com), in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/rci53dro  ·  submitted 1997

Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.

Henry Peter Brougham, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/k0emebpg  ·  submitted 2011 by peter

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Neil Postman, in Wisdom and Ignorance and Law and Politics

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/uvmow3r4  ·  submitted 1997

Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.

Mark Van Doren, 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/yxk2wmee  ·  submitted 1997

No one wants a good education, but everyone wants a good degree.

Lee Rudolph, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/sr7yv9lh  ·  submitted 1997

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Bertrand Russell, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/wf0milq1  ·  submitted 1997

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/qy4zssfi  ·  submitted 1997

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Theodore Roosevelt, in Wisdom and Ignorance