Aphorisms Galore!

Wisdom and Ignorance

327 aphorisms  ·  10 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

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

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/ypvm5zmk  ·  submitted 1997

You can observe a lot by watching.

Yogi Berra, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/wirqwxvl  ·  submitted 1997

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Ambrose Bierce, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/viymqgdo  ·  submitted 1997

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."

Ambrose Bierce, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/yfqykgpj  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the fool their lack of understanding.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/6kh8ljvj  ·  submitted 1997

Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.

Ambrose Bierce, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/y5vxd29g  ·  submitted 1997

Knowledge is like money: the more he gets, the more he craves.

Josh Billings, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/lnv4og3o  ·  submitted 1998

The best time to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.

Josh Billings, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/lbtrv5my  ·  submitted 1997

I will tell you the truth as soon as I figure it out.

Wayne Birmingham, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/mrm8ujlt  ·  submitted 1998 by Marc Spierings

Knowledge and belief are two separate tracks that run parallel to each other and never meet, except in the child.

Godfried Bomans, Buitelingen II, in Science and Religion and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/oy08nxhf  ·  submitted 1998 by Marc Spierings

To use a method is to compare the realm of mind to a stool. The true thinker walks freely.

Godfried Bomans, De avonturen van Bill Clifford, in Science and Religion and 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/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/eqpdfyuw  ·  submitted 1997

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

Rita Mae Brown, in Wisdom and Ignorance