Aphorisms Galore!

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Aphorisms Galore! lets you Feed Your Wit by browsing, searching, submitting, and discussing aphorisms and witty sayings by famous and not-so-famous people.

Welcome! The computer thought you might be interested in these aphorisms today, taking into account things like their recent popularities and how new they are to the collection:

tiny.ag/z91tc0go  ·  submitted 1997

It's better to keep your mouth shut and give the impression that you're stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

Unknown, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/6b9j37a4  ·  submitted 1997

Wise men don't need advice; fools don't take it.

Benjamin Franklin, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/nqhblasx  ·  submitted 1997

It is perfectly true that the government is best which governs least. It is equally true that the government is best which provides most.

Walter Lippmann, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/yqgp7fad  ·  submitted 1997

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

Mahatma Gandhi, in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/tymlwb79  ·  submitted 1997

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in Vice and Virtue and Work and Recreation

tiny.ag/f6aon4ji  ·  submitted 1998

Never try to out-stubborn a cat.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, in Success and Failure

tiny.ag/5gcdbjbx  ·  submitted 1997

Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

Thomas Alva Edison, in Work and Recreation

tiny.ag/w4s36qc2  ·  submitted 1997

A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Love and Hate

tiny.ag/zhi7upjz  ·  submitted 1997

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

John Keats, in Success and Failure

tiny.ag/mjjtqyix  ·  submitted 1997

An excuse is the mark of a moral coward.

Joseph Cimino, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/la8pw7kl  ·  submitted 1997

We have had an Imperial lesson; it may make us an Empire yet!

Rudyard Kipling, in Success and Failure

tiny.ag/orx9er1h  ·  submitted 1997

The wind and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

Edward Gibbon, in Success and Failure

tiny.ag/6thfwduq  ·  submitted 1999

Romance is built on illusion, and when we love someone, we love the illusion they have created for us.

Roger Ebert, (from review of Boys Don't Cry, Oct. 22, 1999), in Love and Hate

tiny.ag/mglnajv0  ·  submitted 1997

It is impossible to love and be wise.

Francis Bacon, in Love and Hate

tiny.ag/lctsfa7d  ·  submitted 1997

Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with the least possible damage.

Edouard Herriot, (from Politicians and Other Scoundrels by Ferdinand Lundberg), in Law and Politics

tiny.ag/frswba1z  ·  submitted 1997

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

Lao Tsu, in Wealth and Poverty

tiny.ag/sq9g8eav  ·  submitted 1997

Dune (paperback)

Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.

Frank Herbert, Dune, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/e87wmjqg  ·  submitted 1997

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/qiy9xdhn  ·  submitted 1997

To "be" means to be related.

Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, 1933 (4th ed., 1958), in Science and Religion and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/8vmi9s0a  ·  submitted 1997

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty -- I call it the one mortal blemish of mankind.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in Science and Religion