Aphorisms Galore!

Wisdom and Ignorance

327 aphorisms  ·  10 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/mfx0o8sc  ·  submitted 1997

If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.

Anaïs Nin, in Happiness and Misery and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/pwxgqowu  ·  submitted 1997

We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are.

Anaïs Nin, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/l2qkzwis  ·  submitted 1997

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

Robert J. Oppenheimer, (on Albert Einstein), in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/8egicznw  ·  submitted 1997

You have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man could be such a fool.

George Orwell, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/pdln3czv  ·  submitted 1997

You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.

Dorothy Parker, (when asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence), in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/hutuz2wq  ·  submitted 1997

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Ellen Parr, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/ctg0dc6w  ·  submitted 1999 by Bill Masterson

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Blaise Pascal, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/xrmys3sk  ·  submitted 1997

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

Luciano Pavarotti, in Art and Literature and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/ipsoc5wu  ·  submitted 1997

The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.

Wendell Phillips, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/vp1lnrlz  ·  submitted 1997

Everything you can imagine is real.

Pablo Picasso, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/s6frnocs  ·  submitted 1997

The Republic (paperback)

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

Plato, The Republic, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/63vctqjk  ·  submitted 1997

Thinking is the soul talking to itself.

Plato, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/dzuvvei3  ·  submitted 1997

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

Plato, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/l0ggy3oy  ·  submitted 1999

'Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

Alexander Pope, (from Golden Treasury of the Familiar), in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/psxefgev  ·  submitted 1997

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

Colin Powell, 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