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Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

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
Reading
Upon
Much
Barbarism
Brought
Learned

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I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.
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Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.
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The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud.
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The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done.
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Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.
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Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.
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Everyone is a genius at least once a year.
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A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
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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.
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There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
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Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
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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.
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It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.
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Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
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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.
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Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.
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One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.
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It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
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A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
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It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.
Georg C. Lichtenberg