Aphorisms Galore!

Altruism and Cynicism

173 aphorisms  ·  15 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/ahfxksue  ·  submitted 1997

You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners.

Rita Mae Brown, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/43mefad8  ·  submitted 1997

All government -- indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act -- is founded on compromise and barter.

Edmund Burke, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/7guwnmr1  ·  submitted 1997

I don't want any "yes-men" around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.

Samuel Goldwyn, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/6jxieopf  ·  submitted 1997

A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

Gian Vincenzo Gravina, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/mcsdq3k5  ·  submitted 1997

A learned County Court judge in a book of memoirs recently said that the overwhelming amount of his time on the bench was taken up "with people who are persuaded by persons whom they do not know to enter into contracts that they do not understand to purchase goods that they do not want with money that they have not got."

Lord Greene, in Altruism and Cynicism and Law and Politics

tiny.ag/u1edofwc  ·  submitted 1997

One nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.

Lucille S. Harper, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/mgrteolp  ·  submitted 2011 by peter

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Robert J. Hanlon, in Altruism and Cynicism and Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/asecpbyl  ·  submitted 1997

A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern.

Edgar A. Shoaff, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/0ihiksxu  ·  submitted 1997

On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks.

H. Allen Smith, Let the Crabgrass Grow, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/dtxsg5kf  ·  submitted 1997

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is statistics.

Josef Stalin, in Altruism and Cynicism and Life and Death

tiny.ag/kdbyxotm  ·  submitted 1997

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

John Steinbeck, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/dxokyfu8  ·  submitted 1997

It's better to be quotable than to be honest.

Tom Stoppard, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/np9dvtka  ·  submitted 1997

Ninety percent of everything is crap.

Theodore Sturgeon, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/vinogpxg  ·  submitted 1997

A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.

Bert Leston Taylor, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/apirm627  ·  submitted 1997

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

James Thurber, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/gymh6otw  ·  submitted 1997

Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.

Mark Twain, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/ne1vhxlr  ·  submitted 1997

Never tell the truth to those unworthy of it.

Mark Twain, in Altruism and Cynicism

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.

Mark van Essen, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/otpgz4zj  ·  submitted 1997

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

Gore Vidal, in Altruism and Cynicism