Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Biercewas an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist. He wrote the short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and compiled a satirical lexicon, The Devil's Dictionary. His vehemence as a critic, his motto "Nothing matters", and the sardonic view of human nature that informed his work, all earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 June 1842
CityMeighs County, OH
CountryUnited States of America
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
Book - Learning : The dunce's derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impertinent ignorance.
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
As a means of dispensing formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without merit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without it...
POSITIVISM- A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.
Learning -the kind of ignorance affected by (and affecting) civilized races, as distinguished from ignorance, the sort of learning incurred by savages. See nonsense.
Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Edible - good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.