Quote

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Georg C. Lichtenberg
Age: 56 †
Born: 1742
Born: July 1
Died: 1799
Died: February 24
Astronomer
French Moralist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Scientist
University Teacher
Writer
København
Prevent
Simply
Read
Many
Thinking
People

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

Image
There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Ambition and suspicion always go together.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
We judge nothing so hastily as character, and yet there is nothing over which we should be more cautious.... I have always found that the so-called bad people improve on closer acquaintance, while the good fall off.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the philosophy itself. When we ask the time, we don't want to know how watches are made.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
The great trick of regarding small departures from the truth as the truth itself - on which is founded the entire integral calculus - is also the basis of our witty speculations, where the whole thing would often collapse if we considered the departures with philosophical rigour.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
In each of us there is a little of all of us.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.
Georg C. Lichtenberg