Aphorisms Galore!

Wisdom and Ignorance

327 aphorisms  ·  10 comments

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/h8oiwuf7  ·  submitted 1997

Philosophers have merely interpreted the world. The point is to change it.

Karl Marx, in Law and Politics and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/jwespnab  ·  submitted 1997

No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.

W. Somerset Maugham, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/fkuqm4vt  ·  submitted 1997

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.

W. Somerset Maugham, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/3zbbml0p  ·  submitted 1997

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Andy McIntyre, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/dwmxy2kw  ·  submitted 1997

Education is civil defense against media fallout.

Marshall McLuhan, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/qol2sxws  ·  submitted 1997

The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein -- it rejects it.

Peter Medawar, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/kqr3auag  ·  submitted 1997

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

Henry Louis Mencken, in Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/h2rdoaxw  ·  submitted 1997

Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche, 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/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/qkrsbfxv  ·  submitted 1997

The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.

Shirley Maclaine, in Wisdom and Ignorance