Quote

To see every day how people get the name 'genius' just as the wood-lice in the cellar the name 'millipede'-not because they have that many feet, but because most people don't want to count to 14-this has had the result that I don't believe anyone any more without checking.

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
Believe
Results
Measurement
People
Names
Wood
Anyone
Count
Science
Woods
Truth
Result
Lice
Without
Genius
Cellar
Many
Feet
Cellars
Every
Name
Checking

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

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Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
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Non cogitant, ergo non sunt.
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A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Pain warns us not to exert our limbs to the point of breaking them. How much knowledge would we not need to recognize this by the exercise of mere reason.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Is it not strange that mankind should so willingly battle for religion and so unwillingly live according to its precepts?
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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It is a sure evidence of a good book if it pleases us more and more as we grow older.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.
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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
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Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
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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People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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
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There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points born and died farther away from one another. The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills they should be, and this method is for the philosophers.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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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I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
Georg C. Lichtenberg