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
Believe
Systems
Actions
Ability
Less
Action
Motivate
Nothing
Demonstrate
Sometimes
Absurdity
Something
Confident
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The greatest things in the world are brought about by other things which we count as nothing: little causes we overlook but which at length accumulate.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The drive to propagate our race has also propagated a lot of other things
Georg C. Lichtenberg
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?
Georg C. Lichtenberg
One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
