Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Less
Action
Motivate
Nothing
Demonstrate
Sometimes
Absurdity
Something
Confident
Believe
Systems
Actions
Ability
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
The world is a body common to all men, changes to it bring about a change in the souls of all men who are turned towards that part of it at that moment.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
I made the journey to knowledge like dogs who go for walks with their masters, a hundred times forward and backward over the same territory and when I arrived I was tired.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
There are people who can believe anything they wish. What lucky creatures!
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
I forget most of what I read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Man is a masterpiece of creation, if only because no amount of determinism can prevent him from believing that he acts as a free being.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
One should never trust a person who, while assuring you of something, puts his hands on his heart.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
