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Ambition and suspicion always go together.

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
Suspicion
Ambition
Together
Always

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

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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
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People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.
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The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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I am grateful that I am not as judgmental as all those censorious, self-righteous people around me. In each of us there is a little of all of us.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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There are people who can believe anything they wish. What lucky creatures!
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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
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He who says he hates all kinds of flattery, and says so in earnest, has undoubtedly not as yet become acquainted with all kinds of it, whether in substance or in form.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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What you have been obliged to discover by yourself leaves a path in your mind which you can use again when the need arises.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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
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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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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
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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
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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.
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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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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Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.
Georg C. Lichtenberg