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We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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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
Officials
Sea
Position
Someone
Occupies
Official
Whereas

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

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Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Delicacy in woman is strength.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.
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I would give something to know for whose sake precisely those deeds were really done which report says were done for the fatherland.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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In every man there is something of all men.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Many a man who is willing to be shot for his belief in a miracle would have doubted, had he been present at the miracle itself.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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It is astonishing how much the word infinitely is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, etc. The concept must have something pleasing about it, or its misuse could not have become so general.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, bread-bread-fame or fame-fame-bread.
Georg C. Lichtenberg