Aphorisms Galore!

Aphorism of the Day

This is an archive of every Aphorim of the Day since 2012.

Every single day, a very sophisticated computer running state of the art software carefully picks an aphorism from the collection and sends it out to all the nice people who have subscribed to the Aphorism of the Day. If you want to be one of these nice people, create a user profile and start a subscription.

2025-10-23

tiny.ag/crui0h1u  ·  submitted 1997

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, (inaugural speech, 1944), in War and Peace

2025-10-22

tiny.ag/5edntuvq  ·  submitted 1997

If I can be of any help, you're in worse trouble than I thought.

Unknown, in Success and Failure

2025-10-21

tiny.ag/hf615shl  ·  submitted 1997

On the whole, human beings want to be good -- but not too good and not quite all the time.

George Orwell, in Vice and Virtue

2025-10-20

tiny.ag/l3yahg9k  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Health and Disease and Life and Death

2025-10-19

tiny.ag/q2py4esl  ·  submitted 1997

Let us so live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.

Mark Twain, in Life and Death and Vice and Virtue

2025-10-18

tiny.ag/63vctqjk  ·  submitted 1997

Thinking is the soul talking to itself.

Plato, in Wisdom and Ignorance

2025-10-17

tiny.ag/orx9er1h  ·  submitted 1997

The wind and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

Edward Gibbon, in Success and Failure

2025-10-16

tiny.ag/ygktzxcq  ·  submitted 1997

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.

Unknown, in Life and Death

2025-10-15

tiny.ag/4hqstejw  ·  submitted 1997

A fool must now and then be right by chance.

William Cowper, Conversation, in Wisdom and Ignorance

2025-10-14

tiny.ag/nuplbfta  ·  submitted 1997

The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.

Jean-Paul Kauffmann, in Science and Religion and Wealth and Poverty