# Newsletters > Balthasar Gracian's The Art of Worldly Wisdom >  Aphorism #133 Better Mad with the rest of the World than Wise alone.

## Admin

Aphorism #133 Better Mad with the rest of the World than Wise alone.

So say politicians. If all are so, one is no worse off than the rest, whereas solitary wisdom passes for folly. So important is it to sail withthe stream. The greatest wisdom often consists in ignorance, or the pretence of it. One has to live with others, and others are mostly ignorant. "To live entirely alone one must be very like a god or quite like a wild beast," but I would turn the aphorism by saying: Better be wise with the many than a fool all alone. There be some too who seek to be original by seeking chimeras.

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