Aphorisms

49 comments:

  1. Those who question everything and those who question nothing deserve each other.

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  2. Hope is to the young what nostalgia is to the old.

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  3. Academics learn more and more about less and less. School pupils learn less and less about more and more.

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  4. Indifference is the cement holding society together.

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  5. An open mind is a means not an end.

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  6. A litigious society undermines itself because the fear of litigation keeps us all dishonest.

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  7. Every relationship blossoms with time, so long as you're no longer in it.

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  8. Public authorities work hardest at getting the wrong things right.

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  9. Hobbes was wrong. Thanks to modern medicine, life is nasty, brutish and long.

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  10. An opinion is no better or worse for the strength with which it is held or for the degree of offence taken at it.

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  11. We are less bundles of neuroses than bundles of diagnoses.

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    1. Excellent. Reminds me of Karl Kraus: "Diagnosis is one of the commonest diseases."

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  12. If dogs are Man's best friend they’re even less choosy than we are.

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  13. The purpose of society is not to validate whatever we choose to do with our lives, but to enable us to have a grown up conversation about it.

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  14. Such is the crisis of masculinity that it is more often women who marry their mothers.

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  15. Loners work out too late that they have to live with themselves.

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  16. Parents are for life, not just for Christmas.

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  17. Little Englanders fail to see that Europeans are as grateful for the English Channel as they are.

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  18. The crowning achievement homophobia to date has been convincing gays that they should want to marry.

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  19. Narcissism is vanity without the benefit of a mirror.

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  20. A great part of being an educator is to elicit things that people don't think they know.

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  21. In an education system obsessed with grades, the examined life is not worth living.

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  22. The best hypocrites never lie.

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  23. On the eighth day the Devil rested.

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  24. The laughable and the funny are growing ever further apart.

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  25. The British have God to thank that we can laugh at ourselves, but only ourselves to thank that there's so much to laugh about.

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  26. No case of dumbing down is so incontrovertible that the most eminent academic in the field won’t deny it.

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  27. Either all French philosophers have the same translator or none of them can write.

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  28. Man was born free, but is everywhere for sale.

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  29. The most successful fraudsters must first deceive themselves.

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  30. Many kind and decent people believe things that make us shudder, while many selfish people are full of beautiful ideals.

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  31. Summer days are long, but summer months are short.

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  32. A stranger is a friend you’ve known too long.

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  33. An optimist is someone who reframes delayed ejaculation as delayed gratification.

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  34. The saddest thing about democracy is that the best people in it are likely to run from public office.

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  35. Bureaucracy attains perfection when it administers things it no longer does.

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  36. The first maxim of bureaucracy is "If it's not worth doing, it's worth doing well." The second is "And vice versa."

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  37. Never trust a man who doesn't drink, and never trust one who does if he's pissed.

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  38. Don't criticise ambiguity: it's not all it seems.

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  39. Health and Safety, with its wild eyed zealots and its doe-eyed enforcers, is the only religion left.

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  40. There are none so blind as those who will not hear.

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  41. Knowing the punchline before you deliver it has spoiled many a good joke.

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  42. Nostalgia lives only where history is dead

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  43. The art of passing exams is to imply you know more than you are willing to divulge.

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  44. I'm an optimist, which means I'm a knickers half-down man.

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  45. Religion is proof that there is no God.

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