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What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
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
True
Characterizes
Employment
Clearly
Freedom
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
Man is perhaps half mind and half matter in the same way as the polyp is half plant and half animal. The strangest creatures are always found on the border lines of species.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Every condition of the soul has its own sign and expression...So you will see how hard it is to seem original without being so.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
One should never trust a person who, while assuring you of something, puts his hands on his heart.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
There is something in the character of every man which cannot be broken in--the skeleton of his character and to try to alter this is like training a sheep for draught purposes.
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
To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
There are people who can believe anything they wish. What lucky creatures!
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears...as easily as we open and shut our eyes.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
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
What we are able to judge with feeling is very little the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
