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If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
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
Honesty
Mankind
Practice
Sure
Many
Would
Starve
People
Thousands
Suddenly
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.
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
The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
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
Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The rules of grammar are mere human statutes, which is why when he speaks out of the possessed the Devil himself speaks bad Latin.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
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
Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.
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
Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
What we are able to judge with feeling is very little the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
An hour-glass is a reminder not only of time's quick flight, but also of the dust to which we must at last return
Georg C. Lichtenberg
We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
