Aphorisms by Leonid S. Sukhorukov
Posted on September 7, 2008
Filed Under Aphorisms |
Leonid Sukhorukov first fell in love with aphorisms, he says, when he heard them from his father and mother in early childhood. “I noticed even at that time that there was a great shortage of shortness in this world,” he recalls. “Unconsciously, I was drawn to any short, witty and sharp phrase. It was as though it was God given.” A native of Ukraine, Sukhorukov has had a diverse career, working variously as a cybernetics researcher, university professor, composer, and host of Ukraine’s first disco TV show. During Soviet rule, he penned sketches for weekly political satire magazines. He has also served, with pride, as the vice-president of the International Association of Professional Bureaucrats, an organization that skewers bureaucracy in all its forms.
When he was a mere ten years old, he coined his first aphorism:
I shall always believe in immortality … as long as I live!
His parents, of course, immediately wrote it down.
Sukhorukov practices the ’spontaneous combustion’ method of aphorism composition. “Time after time, I have such Heaven-sent flashes, which I try always to note down even on the metro or bus, or during lessons, lectures at the university, and lots of other places.” His cites his aphoristic ancestors as authors like Cicero, Tolstoy, Stendhal, G.K. Chesterton, and Stanislaw Jerzy Lec. “But top of my list,” he says, “will always be the genius of Oscar Wilde.”
Here is a selection of Sukhorukov’s aphorisms, from his most recent book All About Everything and other publications:
Life’s obstacles are God’s chance to clarify your intentions.
Obstacles create opportunities.
Virtue is the public face of vice.
A mask is prepared to face anything.
Prejudices are habits that have lost track of time.
Worry is fear in a cul-de-sac.
The future tricks us with false hopes, the past with false memories.
Some marriages give bachelors a master’s degree.
In love, we are poets; in marriage, we are philosophers.
No matter how long you teach a fool, he still knows everything.
History can’t be changed but it can easily be re-written.
Democracy opens mouths but does not fill them.
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* Modesty is the shortest route to obscurity. But once famous, you can afford to become modest. (”All About Everything”,UK,2005)
I just read an aphorism contributed to Leonid S.
Sukhorukov: rightly so? Is this aphorism correct?N.Kreps
“Happiness divided by two is multiplied”
My equivalents are:
Better to teach someone who knows nothing than someone who knows everything.
It’s historic - but we don’t know the story.
Democracy is a majority of votes -
Capitalism is a majority of notes.
“Don’t put too many egos in one basket.”
A true “old pro” at work here: with ink in his blood and ink under his fingertips.