Aphorism of the Day

In the end, everything is a gag.

Charlie Chaplin, in Life and Death

We should forgive our enemies, but only after they've been taken out and shot.

Unknown, in Altruism and Cynicism

Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics and War and Peace

If you don't believe in something, you'll fall for anything.

Unknown, in Wisdom and Ignorance

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

Every nation has the government it deserves.

Joseph de Maistre, in Law and Politics

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

The status quo is the only solution that cannot be vetoed.

Clark Kerr, in Law and Politics

It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of leading causes of statistics.

Fletcher Knebel, in Science and Religion

Upon the education of the people the fate of this country depends.

Benjamin Disraeli, in Wisdom and Ignorance