Aphoristic Intermission

A book mark would be better! Gregg, Arlington,, artist. Chicago : Made by Illinois W.P.A. Art Project, between 1936 and 1940

I check on the retched Twitter once a month just to see Aaron Haspel’s aphorism. I wish he would type them elsewhere. Anyhow, here are some gems from the great Aaron Haspel:

1. People say they can’t draw when they mean they can’t see, and that they can’t write when they mean they can’t think.
2. Capitalism shows no mercy — to capitalists.
3. Common sense means you don’t know the heuristic.
4. World Opinion. Right: 0.3%. Wrong: 3.3%. Not Even Wrong: 96.4%.
5. The great American creeps are Poe and Whitman, and the great American bores are Emerson and Hemingway.
6. Irish blowhard for Irish blowhard, give me Flann O’Brien over Joyce and the guy on the next barstool over Yeats.
7. First you do not write what you think, then you do not say what you think, and finally you do not think what you think.
8. The greatest of all modern errors is the idea that you are worth listening to.
9. The conclusions of philosophy are both true and interesting; but what is true is not interesting, and what is interesting is not true.
10. Not voting is my protest against the voters.
11. Money does not solve problems, it dissolves them.
12. Inequalities of wealth and power pale beside inequality of merit.
13. People will stand for hardship from their rulers but not for insult.
14. “You lousy intelligent people, with your books and your socialism and your sneers.” –Duddy Kravitz
15. It is only hypocrisy that makes most of us bearable.
16. The best argument ever made for money is that people feel compelled to say it can’t buy everything.
17. Many wrongly believe themselves great, but no one wrongly believes himself mediocre.
18. The historical imagination is, simply, the recognition that then was someone else’s now.
19. People throughout history have died mostly of being in the way.
20. Jobs are like jail, except with time added for good behavior.
21. In psychiatry it is the diagnosis that is the disease.
22. Anti-Semite, n. A person whom Jews hate.
23. Leader, n. Megalomaniac whose luck has not yet run out.
24. Government of the articulate, by the articulate, for the articulate, shall not perish from this earth.
25. Banning cousin marriage was the greatest service the Catholic Church rendered to civilization.
26. Any argument that depends at any point on the word “natural” is wrong.
27. To judge the height of a civilization one need inspect only its mathematics and its music.
28. If you wish to make a belief disappear, don’t waste your time demonstrating that it is an illusion. Demonstrate that it makes you fat.
29. The Jobs Cult was anti-technical. He led millions to conclude that they, too, could find success through their discerning eye for fonts.
30. A man can adapt to nearly anything, but only two or three times.

• Aphoristic
• The Intermission

Tagged as: aaron haspel, aphorism