Philosophy: quotes, facts and reflections - Page 2

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A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures.

In Irish the full proverb runs “Gáire maith is codladh fada, an dá leigheas is fearr i leabhar an dochtúra”: a good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures in the doctor's book. Struck in 1964 by a crippling, painful illness, the American journalist Norman Cousins watched comedy films and reported that ten minutes of real belly laughter gave him at least two hours of pain-free sleep. How much this helped him recover is debated, but his 1979 book Anatomy of an Illness made the story famous.

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Do not praise the day before sunset.

Russian says “Khvali zhizn pri smerti, a den vecherom”: praise a life at its end, and a day in the evening. The Old Norse poem Hávamál, the “Sayings of the High One”, spoken in the voice of the god Odin, likewise tells people to praise the day at evening and the ice once they have crossed it. The Greek historian Herodotus records Solon, the lawgiver of Athens, warning Croesus, the fabulously rich king of Lydia, to call no one happy until he had seen how their life ended.

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The morning is wiser than the evening.

“Utro vechera mudreneye” is one of the best-known Russian proverbs and a stock line in fairy tales. In “The Frog Princess”, as recorded by the folklorist Alexander Afanasyev in the 19th century, the frog tells the despairing prince not to grieve but to go to sleep, because the morning is wiser than the evening; by dawn she has done his impossible task. Science partly agrees: in a 2004 German study, more than twice as many people spotted a puzzle's hidden rule after a night's sleep as after staying awake.

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Trust, but verify.

In Russian the proverb rhymes: “Doveryai, no proveryai”. It reached English through Ronald Reagan. Suzanne Massie, an American scholar of Russian history who met him many times between 1984 and 1987, told him that Russians like to talk in proverbs and taught him this one. Reagan repeated it throughout his nuclear arms talks with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. When he used it again at the signing of their treaty on intermediate-range missiles in December 1987, Gorbachev said, “You repeat that at every meeting,” and Reagan replied, “I like it.”

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If you chase two rabbits, you will catch neither.

In Russian the proverb runs “Za dvumya zaytsami pogonishsya, ni odnogo ne poymayesh”: chase two hares and you will not catch even one. A hare runs fast and doubles back, so a hunter who switches between two loses both. Japanese has almost the same saying, “Nito o ou mono wa itto o mo ezu”. Psychologists have measured the cost: since the first experiments in 1927, studies have found that people who switch between two tasks work more slowly and make more mistakes, a penalty known as the switch cost.

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Measure seven times, cut once.

In Russian the proverb is “Sem raz otmer, odin raz otrezh”. The picture comes from tailoring and carpentry: a measurement can be checked as often as you like, but a cut cannot be undone. Seven is not an exact count here. In Russian sayings it often simply means “many”, as in “sem pyatnits na nedele”, seven Fridays in a week, said of someone who keeps changing their mind. English carpenters give the same advice more briefly: “Measure twice, cut once.”

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Not my circus, not my monkeys.

“Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy” is a Polish way of saying that a chaotic situation is not yours to sort out. It is a modern idiom, not an old proverb: this form is first found in print in 1988, and “your circus, your monkeys”, said to someone else, in 1979. The journalist Adam Michnik used it in the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in 1996, and it has since passed word for word into English and German. It is less about indifference than about knowing where your responsibility ends.

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A hungry bear does not dance.

In Bulgarian the proverb is “Gladna mechka horo ne igrae”: a hungry bear does not dance the horo, the circle dance in which people hold hands. The picture comes from the dancing bears that trainers once led from village to village across the Balkans, performing for coins. Its meaning is practical: you cannot expect work or good cheer from someone who is hungry or unpaid. A cheeky Bulgarian ending adds that once fed, the bear lies down to sleep. Bulgaria's last dancing bears were rescued in 2007.

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If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

It is one of the most quoted “African proverbs”, yet no African-language original has been found. The proverb scholars Wolfgang Mieder and Charles Clay Doyle see it as a modern reply to Rudyard Kipling's line “He travels the fastest who travels alone”; as early as 1917 an American company magazine answered that “he travels farthest who pulls with his team”. Today's exact wording is first known from a 2004 book. Al Gore quoted it in 2007, on the day he was named a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

African, widely attributed ProverbRead card

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A roaring lion kills nothing.

Collections of African proverbs usually give this saying as “A roaring lion kills no game” and often credit it to Uganda. It matches how lions really behave. A roar is a signal, not a weapon: lions roar mostly at night, to announce their presence and keep in touch with their pride, and the sound carries up to 8 kilometres. Hunting is done in silence, by creeping close and then rushing, because fast prey such as gazelles would outrun a lion in a long chase. English says “Barking dogs seldom bite”.

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Only a fool tests the depth of a river with both feet.

Collections of African proverbs often credit this saying to the Asante (Ashanti) people of Ghana, in the form “No one tests the depth of a river with both feet”. The advice works literally too: a river hides its depth and the force of its current, and the US National Weather Service warns that just 15 centimetres (6 inches) of fast-moving floodwater can knock an adult over. In everyday life it means making a small trial before a commitment you cannot undo, like dipping a toe in first.

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When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.

In Amharic, the most widely spoken language of Ethiopia, the proverb is just four words: “Dir biyabir anbessa yasir”. The word dir means a spider's web, and also the warp, the lengthwise threads stretched on a loom, so the image suits weavers as well as spiders. A close variant says that when threads unite they make a gabi, the thick cotton wrap worn for warmth in the Ethiopian highlands. Aesop's fable of the bundle of sticks makes the same point: one stick snaps easily, but a bundle does not.

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When the roots are deep, there is no reason to fear the wind.

The line is often shared as an African proverb, but no particular language or people has been identified for it. Its botany is sound. Trees that sway in the wind respond by growing thicker trunks and stronger roots, a reaction botanists call thigmomorphogenesis, from the Greek for “touch” and “shaping”. Biosphere 2, a huge sealed glasshouse in the Arizona desert, showed the reverse: its trees grew fast but weak, because with no wind they never formed the tougher “stress wood” that wind normally builds.

African, commonly attributed ProverbRead card

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A person is a person through other people.

This is the best-known maxim of Ubuntu, a southern African ethic whose name means “humanity” in Zulu and Xhosa. In Zulu it runs “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”; Xhosa says “Umntu ngumntu ngabantu”, and Sotho and Tswana “Motho ke motho ka batho”. The idea is that we become fully human through how we treat others and how they treat us. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, described a person with ubuntu as someone who is diminished when others are humiliated.

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However long the night, the dawn will break.

In Hausa, one of Africa's most widely spoken languages, used across northern Nigeria and Niger, the proverb runs “Komai nisan dare, gari zai waye”: however long the night, day will break. R. C. Abraham's Dictionary of the Hausa Language (1949) glosses it as “every cloud has a silver lining”. It is still so familiar that a 2019 Hausa film took its first words as a title, and young Hausa speakers have turned it into a joke about social media: however late the night, someone is online.

African, Hausa and wider African attribution ProverbRead card

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The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.

Widely shared as an African proverb, this line has no confirmed source in any particular African language. It reads like the dark twin of another saying often called African, “It takes a village to raise a child”, which Hillary Clinton used as the title of her 1996 book. Psychology backs its warning. In experiments, people who were left out, for example ignored in a simple ball-tossing game or told they would probably end up alone in life, became more aggressive and less willing to help others.

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Rain does not fall on one roof alone.

The saying is usually credited to Cameroon, a country often called “Africa in miniature” because it holds almost every landscape of the continent, from beaches and rainforest to mountains, savanna and desert, and some 250 languages. Rain is an everyday image there: Debundscha, a village at the foot of Mount Cameroon, gets more than 10 metres of rain a year, among the highest totals on Earth. The proverb's point is that trouble rarely singles out one household, so it makes sense to help the neighbour whose roof leaks today.

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The path is made by walking.

The card condenses two lines by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado (1875–1939): “Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar”, “Traveller, there is no road; the road is made by walking.” They come from poem XXIX of “Proverbios y cantares” (Proverbs and Songs) in his collection Campos de Castilla (Fields of Castile), first published in 1912. Machado sided with the Spanish Republic and died in exile in Collioure, France, in February 1939. In 1969 the Catalan singer Joan Manuel Serrat turned the poem into a much-loved song, “Cantares”.

After Antonio Machado, “Proverbios y cantares” XXIX (Campos de Castilla)Read card

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Wisdom is like a baobab tree. No one individual can embrace it.

The proverb belongs to the Ewe people of south-eastern Ghana and southern Togo, not to the Akan, as it is often labelled. The German linguist Diedrich Westermann recorded it in his Ewe dictionary of 1905. In Ewe it begins “Nunya, adidoe”: nunya, knowledge or wisdom, is a baobab. The Ghanaian composer Kenneth Kafui used those words as the title of a choral work in 1979. The image is exact: an African baobab's trunk can be more than ten metres across, far beyond any one person's reach.

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If you close your eyes to facts, you will learn through accidents.

The saying circulates as an African proverb, though no language or people has been identified for this wording. Psychologists have a name for the habit it warns against: the ostrich effect, avoiding information that is useful but unwelcome, such as not checking your bank balance after spending a lot. Studies of investors in Sweden and the United States found that they looked at their portfolios more often when markets were rising than when they were falling. The name rests on a myth: ostriches do not bury their heads in sand.

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The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

In Japanese the proverb is “Deru kui wa utareru”: the stake that sticks out gets hammered down. Japanese treats the nail version, “deru kugi”, as a slip, though English usually has a nail. The saying describes how people who stand out, through talent, opinions or simply being different, are pushed back into line, and it can be a warning, an observation or a complaint. Australians and New Zealanders speak of cutting down “tall poppies”. A modern Japanese reply: the stake that sticks out too far never gets hammered.

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Even dust, when piled up, becomes a mountain.

In Japanese the proverb is “Chiri mo tsumoreba yama to naru”: even dust, when it piles up, becomes a mountain. It is a card in iroha karuta, a game with a proverb for each syllable of the old kana syllabary. The image is far older: the preface to the Kokin Wakashū, an imperial poetry anthology of the early 10th century, says that tall mountains rise from the dust at their foot. Swahili puts it more modestly: “Haba na haba hujaza kibaba”, little by little fills the measure.

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The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.

This line is often called a Japanese proverb, but no Japanese original has been found for it. The idea is far older. In Aesop's fable of the oak and the reed, retold in Latin by the Roman writer Avianus in the 5th century, a proud oak trusts its strength and is blown down by a storm, while the reed bends with the wind and survives. The Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese book of wisdom, also says that a stiff tree breaks. English says simply: better bend than break.

Proverb (commonly labeled Japanese; the image traces closer to Aesop's Oak and the Reed)Read card

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A clever hawk hides its claws.

In Japanese the proverb is 能ある鷹は爪を隠す (nō aru taka wa tsume o kakusu): the able hawk hides its talons. Japanese dictionaries explain it plainly: people of real ability do not show it off. A version of it is already recorded in a Japanese collection of sayings from about 1599. It is often said of a quiet, modest person who turns out to be a real master of their craft. English makes the same point from the other side: empty vessels make the most noise.

Japanese ProverbRead card