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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

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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
Side
Opponents
Years
Sides
Convince
Annoy
Make
Books
Convinced
Bestow
Year
Argument
Ceased
Taken
Merely
Printed
Known
Therefore
Arguments
Others
Courage
Pens
Book
Strength
Annoying

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He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.
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There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.
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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.
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Everyone should study at least enough philosophy and belles-lettres to make his sexual experience more delectable.
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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 often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
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Everyone is a genius at least once a year.
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Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense.
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With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.
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There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
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.
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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.
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Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.
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We have to believe that everything has a cause, as the spider spins its web in order to catch flies. But it does this before it knows there are such things as flies.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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
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Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.
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To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.
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To live when you do not want to is dreadful, but it would be even more terrible to be immortal when you did not want to be. As things are, however, the whole ghastly burden is suspended from me by a thread which I can cut in two with a penny-knife.
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Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
Georg C. Lichtenberg