Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Science
Order
Spins
Doe
Spider
Everything
Spiders
Believe
Flies
Things
Catch
Cause
Causes

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

Image
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
Image
Everyone is a genius at least once a year.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
One of our forefathers must have read a forbidden book.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Ideas too are a life and a world.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
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
Image
The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.
Georg C. Lichtenberg