Instant Do It Yourself Wisdom

Introduction. Wisdom often carries over through maxims, aphorisms, proverbs, and truisms. They are often stated vaguely, in ways that resonate differently with different readers but carry a similar message.

Most are a single sentence, sometimes two. They tell us, guide us, and sometimes suggest wise but honest responses to happenstances, prospects, and events. Of course, the major tomes of Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, Kant, and others can require years of study to profit from. Many well-known maxims come from their writings.

You want to be wise, the pride of your family, or the pride of the workplace. How to do this is a good question, but one that has a ready answer. You simply invent it.  Here we give methods with examples, some cooked up at home and many from the literature. We call it do-it-yourself DIY) wisdom. One convention: If I’ve found the maxim, say in books of quotes, it is displayed in quotes; if it is my construction, no quotes are used.

Do It Yourself Wisdom

You, too, can be wise with words. Recipes are available, and we take up a couple here.  For words, just pick two of them and mix in a counterbalance.  Or use one phrase to amplify another and then reverse.  Alliteration helps. Assiduity, like precision, is not the goal.  Loose construction is better.  How the mind fills in what the words leave out is remarkable - and to your advantage. Think of a poem with just one line.  For example, let’s use “love” and “liberty,” and a few others.

• Love is far less without liberty, and liberty is far less without love.
• The spirit enriches reason just as reason enriches the spirit.
• Knowledge needs intuition even more than intuition needs knowledge.
• Prayers are answered more often than lotto tickets win. (Note the embedded self-reflection.)

Perhaps you’re thinking these wisdom-bytes are not museum quality. No doubt true. The nature of wisdom rests with its individual resonance.  Yet, we can all crank these out by the dozens per day. Keep at it. Eventually, your home-spun wisdom could win the wisdom-lotto and probably sooner than your lotto tickets will win the grand prize. Other wisdom-esque expressions come from connecting or inverting incongruent objects. Metaphors are also effective.

• Those without education live in a winter of ignorance.
• Taking refuge in the popular is no more than a thin, transparent film.
• When the mind is a servant, the body is a slave.
• Strength comes from failures - but not too many.
• Youth is easily deceived by the impracticable.
• Wherever I go, I feel I have been there already.
• Wisdom is to knowledge as knowledge is to information.
• Wisdom is like a master key; it opens many doors.

·        Marriage is incompatible with the selfish life.

• We have reached an inflection[1] point, and seek enhanced improvement. (Totally meaningless and a favorite of politicians.)

Your goal is to craft words that wash over the reader, giving an almost mystical meaning, even if it doesn't yield to analysis. 

Here are a few more, though not original. Notice the contrasting terms. A. You can only be truly happy if you've been very sad. B. You can never appreciate wealth unless you've been poor. C. If you never taste a bad apple, you can never appreciate a good one. - Turkish maxim.

Caution!  It takes some practice, but not too much. You can do this.

Turing’s Maxim

In this short section, we’ll consider a maxim from one of the great mathematicians and cryptographers of the 20th century, Alan Turing (1912-1954). The problem is that without familiarity with advanced mathematics, this maxim may not have genuine meaning for a general audience. We will look for a similar meaning through re-expression. From Turing we have,

"Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition."

Looking for some wisdom, this maxim suggests that everything (e.g. science) in the world is a contained mechanism, with science on the inside, while it is bounded from the outside by conditions we may not know. However, the inside and outside are strongly linked with the boundary conditions specifying what happens inside. Any resonance so far? Possibly not.

 

 

  Figure 1 Alan Turing

There are many ways to express this sentiment. I have thought of two alternatives that express this sentiment in different ways, more understandable to the non-scientist. These examples show two different concepts using two different descriptions. It becomes a contrast in words. Very short, yet reasonably accurate, they may resonate better.

Science is the realization. Religion is the imagination.

Science is to know from observation. Religion is to know from belief.

In the first, we refer to your imagination, which, upon reflection, is an unknown or alien part of you. It’s yours, of course, but you can’t control it. It's like your involuntary muscles. It most certainly affects your realization. In the second, the unknown, of course, is the personal or other beliefs.  Both, and even Touring’s, use relatively vague terms. They may have clear meanings to the individual, but those meanings vary from person to person. As we’ve done above, you can adapt a given maxim into your own with different words or a varied structure. Bear in mind, many maxims we know well are improved versions of those made by others.

More Maxims

Writing maxims or aphorisms is an art form we should all learn. They should be short and contain vague terms, or terms that can readily be adapted to the situation at hand. Economy of language is essential. Often, they use the same word twice, once as the subject and then as the object. Some of the best transcend politics and religion. Example: “A stitch in time saves nine.” That one is well known. Here are a few more amateur efforts I made, plus one appropriate for all occasions given to us by a literary master. All these rely on a single key word, or two complementary words.

·       Justice will come in time, provided time still allows for justice. 

·       She knew she could overcome the challenge but didn’t know the challenge would overcome her.

·       Fixing the problem created more problems than the problem fixed. 

·       “Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said.” – Voltaire

Impossible Maxims

Now that you know how maxims are made, let's look at those that are essentially impossible to follow. Yet they seem deep and profound. Again, they use vague language, a duality of subject and predicate, and other linguistic devices. Impossible maxims come in two main flavors: those that prescribe or celebrate pursuing the unattainable, and those that rest on a logical, physical, or practical contradiction. Both kinds turn up constantly in proverbs, philosophy, and everyday advice.

Maxims that seek the impossible. These treat impossibility as a target rather than a barrier.

• “The difficult is done at once; the impossible takes a little longer.” (Arabic)
• “Nothing is impossible to a willing mind.” (French)
• “By asking for the impossible we obtain the best possible.” (Italian)
• “You must act as if it is impossible to fail.” (Ashanti)
• “Nothing is impossible to pains and patience.”
• “It is always the impossible that happens.” (French)
• “Whatever problem the mind can create, the mind can solve.” (Sherlock Holmes)

Related modern versions include “Shoot for the moon” and “Act as though it were impossible to fail.” They work by stretching the boundary of the possible; even partial success exceeds ordinary limits.

Maxims that rely on impossibility should be familiar. These encode a contradiction so the advice or observation can exist at all. Here are some classic “cannot have both” forms.

• “You cannot sell the cow and still have the milk.” (Scotch)
• “You cannot blow and swallow at the same time.” (German)
• “One foot cannot stand on two boats.” (Chinese) Compare with the more familiar: “You cannot step into the same river twice.” Herodotus (Greek)
• “You cannot have your cake and eat it too.”
• “I cannot run and sit still at the same time.”

Irreversibility and logical contradiction:

• “Water and words are easy to pour but impossible to recover.” (Chinese)
• “A thing cannot be at the same time both true and false.”
• “When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (Holmes’s old maxim)

Duty and universalization:

• “No one is bound to do impossibilities”
• “I will make a false promise whenever I need money.” If universalized (I’ll tell lies whenever I want something), the maxim collapses.

Here is an example that sits on the border: “To love and be wise is impossible” (Spanish). It states an impossibility and warns against seeking both at once.

These sayings endure because they are useful. The first group motivates overreach; the second group maps the hard edges of reality so people stop wasting effort on genuine contradictions. Some convey humor: “He can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Now let’s try our hand at making a few.

·       The new teacher planned for all her students to make the honor roll.

·       Sure, it’s impossible, but I know I can do it.

·       You cannot believe the universe is what we observe, and the universe created the observer.

·       It’s just a matter of time before science knows everything.

You may find these impossible maxim types more difficult to construct than others.

Conclusion

We have seen that maxims must be short and pithy. They must use words that everyone can interpret, often vague, and those words must be carefully chosen. Use devices like reversing the subject and predicate, opposite words, alliteration, and the like. You can change maxims you like to purposes you need. All of this sharpens your word choice to convince your audience, whether at home or in the office. Whether you're giving a brief or longer talk, interjecting personal maxims punctuates what you’re trying to say. People remember them. Finally, “How you say it can be as important as what you say.”

©2026 G Donald Allen

---

[1] No one uses this word properly, though it sounds weighty. Politicians love it.