Aphorisms Galore!

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Aphorisms Galore! lets you Feed Your Wit by browsing, searching, submitting, and discussing aphorisms and witty sayings by famous and not-so-famous people.

Welcome! The computer thought you might be interested in these aphorisms today, taking into account things like their recent popularities and how new they are to the collection:

tiny.ag/pu94ynqw  ·  submitted 1997

You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.

Dean Martin, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/2cctxyhg  ·  submitted 1997

If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia.

Hans A. Bethe, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/8bpf0foj  ·  submitted 1997

I am become death, shatterer of worlds.

Robert J. Oppenheimer, (quoting the Bhagavadgita after witnessing the first nuclear explosion), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/p6bwfqfr  ·  submitted 1997

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

P. J. O'Rourke, in Art and Literature

tiny.ag/d3ttj2ag  ·  submitted 1997

You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him think.

Elbert Hubbard, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/la65dtiv  ·  submitted 1998

It was involuntary. They sank my boat.

John F. Kennedy, (comment when asked about his heroism), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/ct4xj6gg  ·  submitted 1997

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

Albert Einstein, in Science and Religion

tiny.ag/fg9hhljz  ·  submitted 1997

Two things I cannot understand: myself and others.

Erkki J. Jyrkkanen, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/mgtvsjqa  ·  submitted 1997

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas Alva Edison, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

tiny.ag/mtktl96r  ·  submitted 1997

Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not nailed down.

Collis P. Huntington, in Altruism and Cynicism

tiny.ag/hyedkhd2  ·  submitted 1997

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/vmqykh2c  ·  submitted 1997

Catch-22 (paperback)

The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as we could with both of them.

Joseph Heller, Catch-22, in Work and Recreation

tiny.ag/dlefcimh  ·  submitted 1997

Comedy is tragedy plus time.

Carol Burnett, in Happiness and Misery

tiny.ag/qn3ryz0y  ·  submitted 1998

Freedom is not the right to live as we please, but the right to find how we ought to live in order to fulfill our potential.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/koyyze4o  ·  submitted 1997

Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.

Marva Collins, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/gwiaxqqe  ·  submitted 1997

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

Ludwig van Beethoven, in Success and Failure

tiny.ag/kjm5ugma  ·  submitted 1997

Change occurs in direct proportion to dissatisfaction, but dissatisfaction never changes.

Doug Horton, in Success and Failure

tiny.ag/kl7xzzq3  ·  submitted 1997

An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind.

Mahatma Gandhi, in Vice and Virtue

tiny.ag/1i8zitnu  ·  submitted 1998

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harms way.

John Paul Jones, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/pmqy9n03  ·  submitted 1997

It's better to waste one's youth than to do nothing with it at all.

Georges Courteline, in Life and Death