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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
Believe
Flies
Things
Catch
Cause
Causes
Science
Order
Spins
Doe
Spider
Everything
Spiders
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The world is a body common to all men, changes to it bring about a change in the souls of all men who are turned towards that part of it at that moment.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
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
One use of dreams is that, unprejudiced by our often forced and artificial reflections, they represent the impartial outcome of our entire being.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.
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.
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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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
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
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
To read means to borrow to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
