When brevity is the soul of wit: my favourite aphorisms

Think of aphorisms as the haikus of philosophy.

While the world obsesses over the rhythms of algorithms, I prefer the dance of aphorisms – brief, brilliant and often witty condensations of wisdom. Think of them as the haikus of philosophy.

Before revealing my two all-time favourites, here are some common-or-garden examples of pithy perception. He who hesitates is lost. Easy come, easy go. ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. A penny saved is a penny earned. All that glitters is not gold. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Live by the sword, die by the sword. It is better to be alone than in bad company. Don’t judge a book by its cover. Curiosity killed the cat. Practise what you preach.

Oscar Wilde was the maestro of the form. A few among his hundreds of aphorisms? The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. Questions are never indiscreet; answers sometimes are. The only thing one really knows about human nature is that it changes. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it takes a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success. He who stands most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best. There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

American polymath Benjamin Franklin was pretty good at aphorisms too. Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. Beware of the young doctor and the old barber. Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days. Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards. Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

My favourites? On his 80th-something birthday the great cellist Pablo Casals held a press conference in Madrid. As we old blokes do, Pablo was banging on about the sorry state of things when he stopped, paused and uttered two sentences that don’t seem to fit. And yet, to this fellow octogenarian, they seem perfect. “The situation is hopeless.” A beat. “We must take the next step.” It’s a sentiment that seems universally applicable – to everything from war to racism and climate change.

And talking of climate change, I first heard my other favourite aphorism when I was chair of the Commission for the Future, established by Barry Jones, Hawke’s minister for science. The CFF would soon bring the issue of the Greenhouse Effect, and global warming, to public attention but at that first meeting what I best remember is the following statement to the board by a UK scientist: “Data isn’t information. Information isn’t knowledge. Knowledge isn’t wisdom.”

We’re drowning in data. Powerful people and organisations fight to gather and possess it. But in and of itself, data is worthless. Like iron ore, it has to be processed – value-added until it becomes information. Information, too, needs further refinement – into ingots of knowledge. And even knowledge is valueless – until and unless it becomes, yes, wisdom. Which seems more magical than the alchemical dream of turning base metal into gold.

It’s all too apparent that there’s not a lot of wisdom around. You could say the situation is hopeless. We must take the next step.