Altruism and Cynicism
173 aphorisms · 15 comments
Aphorisms in This Category
141–160 (174)
tiny.ag/apirm627 · submitted 1997
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
tiny.ag/hq8w7xao · submitted 1997
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
tiny.ag/dfwohelg · submitted 1997
It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.
tiny.ag/wqt4ciab · submitted 1997
A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
tiny.ag/r1bfukdv · submitted 1997
Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.
tiny.ag/q6kxew3z · submitted 1997
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
tiny.ag/sdmeheo7 · submitted 1997
I am prepared to meet anyone, but whether anyone is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
tiny.ag/gymh6otw · submitted 1997
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
tiny.ag/ne1vhxlr · submitted 1997
Never tell the truth to those unworthy of it.
tiny.ag/7do2rifh · submitted 1997
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
Mark Twain, What is Man?, 1906, in Altruism and Cynicism
tiny.ag/r6bo5aic · submitted 1998 by Mark van Essen
Black, white, brown, yellow or even red, we piss with our pants down, and go naked to bed.
tiny.ag/9einaqki · submitted 1997
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
Jean Cocteau, in Altruism and Cynicism and Success and Failure
tiny.ag/r3gvjlqa · submitted 1997
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
tiny.ag/hwvmnmsf · submitted 1997
I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.
tiny.ag/bn17or2l · submitted 1997
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
tiny.ag/g7qmt4qj · submitted 1997
Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if you run out of food.
tiny.ag/avosjwgh · submitted 1997
I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.
tiny.ag/tnirgb8y · submitted 1997
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
tiny.ag/jwmd8ebc · submitted 1997
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
tiny.ag/jcmyu3ji · submitted 1997
Demagogue: One who preaches a doctrine he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
141–160 (174)