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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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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
Causes
Science
Order
Spins
Doe
Spider
Everything
Spiders
Believe
Flies
Things
Catch
Cause
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
A good part of the fame of most celebrated men is due to the shortsightedness of their admirers
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
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
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
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
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
Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
As soon as you know a man to be blind, you imagine that you can see it from his back.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
What we are able to judge with feeling is very little the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
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
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
A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Marriage, in contrast to the flu, starts with a fever and ends with the chills.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
