"A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make any sense."

James Thurber Journalism See all quotes by James Thurber →

React to this quote

More by James Thurber

“It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all.”

“All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.”

“The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals.”

“It's a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.”

“Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.”

“With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.”

Resonant Thoughts

"What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power, but that he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely."

— Christopher Reeve

Entertainment1952–2004

#wisdom

"I’ve always had this funny feeling about reality. It just seems very feeble to me sometimes. It doesn’t seem to have the substantiality that it’s suppose to have."

— Philip K. Dick

Literature1928–1982

#truth

"Colonel Roosevelt liked the song of the blackbird so much that he was almost indignant that he had not heard more of its reputation before. He said everybody talked about the song of the thrush; it ha…"

— Edward Grey

Politics1862–1933

#justice

"It just doesn’t attract me. I’m of a certain period, a certain evolution. I hear music differently I mean, for me, comparing electric bass to acoustic bass is sacrilege."

— Bill Evans

Music1929–1980

#justice