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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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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
Everything
Case
Arrive
Without
Certainly
Superficial
Matter
Cases
Indifference
Something
System
Latter
Effort
Former
Whether
Finally
Learn
Roots
Thought
Merely
More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg
The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.
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
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
Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Pain warns us not to exert our limbs to the point of breaking them. How much knowledge would we not need to recognize this by the exercise of mere reason.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
Universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The course of the seasons is a piece of clockwork, with a cuckoo to call when it is spring.
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
People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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
The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
As nations improve, so do their gods.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
In every man there is something of all men.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
