(Poland, 1909-1966) "Life is too short to write long things," Lee once remarked. Born in Lvov, a city that in 1909 was in southeastern Poland but is now part of Ukraine, Lee came from a wealthy and aristocratic family. With the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I, he and his family lost most of their money and privileges. When World War II broke out, Lee was sent to a concentration camp in Tarnopol. He survived there for two years, until he managed to escape by donning a stolen German uniform. Back in Warsaw, he joined the communist resistance, first as an editor of underground periodicals and then as part of the guerrilla movement. After the war, Lee remained affiliated with the communists, serving as the press attache at the Polish consulate in Vienna from 1946 to 1950. But he gradually grew disillusioned with communism. In his aphorisms, Lee parodied the feel-good platitudes and propaganda put out by the communist party machine. "Why do I write these short aphorisms?" he once asked. "Because words fail me!" Lee loved Vienna, partly because it was once the seat of his beloved Austro-Hungarian Empire and partly because it was the city where Karl Kraus, his literary idol and role model, used to live.Like Kraus, Lee was a satirist. While Kraus targeted the bourgeois values of Europe, Lee targeted the totalitarian state.
Essential Aphorisms
Stupidity is the mother of crime. But the fathers are frequently geniuses.
All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.
When myth meets myth, the collision is very real.
You have to climb to reach a deep thought.
Never saw on the branch you are sitting on, unless they are trying to hang you from it.
Some people's thoughts are so shallow they don't even reach their heads.
Transparent aims cast a shadow.
It is easy to form a chain from a string of zeroes.
Many of those who were ahead of their time had to wait for it in not too comfortable quarters.
The weakest link in the chain is also the strongest. It can break the chain.
When everybody sings the same tune, the words are unimportant.
When Right goes before Might, it risks a shot in the back.
Pity the man who only sees stars when he is struck in the face.
The constitution of a country should not violate the constitution of its citizens.
When they blow the horn of plenty this loud, it must be empty.
I prefer the sign NO ENTRY to the one that says NO EXIT.
Tired rebels rest in the armchairs of power.
The strongest brakes fail on the path of least resistance.
Politics: a Trojan horse race.
There are those who reach great depths only to release little bubbles.
The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones.
The window on the world can be covered by a newspaper.
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
In the beginning was the Word—at the end just the Cliche.
Parallel Lines: Stanislaw Jerzy Lee and Karl Kraus
It is amazingly difficult to raise an echo in empty heads.
—LEC
Lots of knowledge fits into a hollow head.
—KRAUS
Mud sometimes gives the illusion of depth.
—LEC
An illusion of depth often occurs if a blockhead is a muddlehead at the same time.
—KRAUS
An apt aphorism half kills, half immortalizes.
—LEC
Aphorisms are never congruent with the truth; they are either half-truths or one-and-a-half truths.
— KRAUS
GEARY'S GUIDE TO THE WORLD'S GREAT APHORISTS
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