Quote

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

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
Another
Replied
Kind
Dwelling
Plato
Splendid
Carpet
Diogenes
Thus
Carpets
Across
Trample
Pride
Paced

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

Image
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
Image
The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
He who understands the wise is wise already.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence Two times two is four.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
The drive to propagate our race has also propagated a lot of other things
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
It is astonishing how much the word infinitely is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, etc. The concept must have something pleasing about it, or its misuse could not have become so general.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Those who never have time do least
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
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
Image
It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
I forget most of what I read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Man is a masterpiece of creation, if only because no amount of determinism can prevent him from believing that he acts as a free being.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Everyone is a genius at least once a year.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Image
Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.
Georg C. Lichtenberg