Aphorisms Galore!

Wisdom and Ignorance

327 aphorisms  ·  10 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/7vrvn3zw  ·  submitted 1997

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

George Bernard Shaw, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/r2oe16bv  ·  submitted 1997

He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

William Shakespeare, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/dyhkrulm  ·  submitted 1997

Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.

Delmore Schwartz, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/o4053hxu  ·  submitted 1997

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

E. F. Schumacher, in Science and Religion and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/mgn8bwur  ·  submitted 1997

With stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.

Friedrich von Schiller, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/4mch5yty  ·  submitted 1997

I'm always fascinated by the way memory diffuses fact.

Diane Sawyer, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/mrepdhu2  ·  submitted 1997

Pooh's Little Instruction Book (hardcover)

People who don't think probably don't have brains; rather, they have grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake.

Joan Powers, Pooh's Little Instruction Book, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/loqr7ybp  ·  submitted 1997

Too clever is dumb.

Ogden Nash, 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/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/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/63vctqjk  ·  submitted 1997

Thinking is the soul talking to itself.

Plato, 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/vp1lnrlz  ·  submitted 1997

Everything you can imagine is real.

Pablo Picasso, in 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/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/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/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/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/h2rdoaxw  ·  submitted 1997

Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in Wisdom and Ignorance