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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

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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
Always
Littles
Average
Transform
Find
Minds
Brains
Little
Quiet
Superior
Without
Ones
Superiors
Whole
Brain
Discover
Great
Whether
Excuse
Particularity
Mind
Keep
Faults
Blames
Something
Cannot
Blame
Blaming

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

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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.
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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.
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A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.
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I would give something to know for whose sake precisely those deeds were really done which report says were done for the fatherland.
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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.
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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.
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Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.
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There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.
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The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.
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The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.
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Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.
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Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.
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To read means to borrow to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.
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If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.
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One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.
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Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence Two times two is four.
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To see every day how people get the name 'genius' just as the wood-lice in the cellar the name 'millipede'-not because they have that many feet, but because most people don't want to count to 14-this has had the result that I don't believe anyone any more without checking.
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The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the philosophy itself. When we ask the time, we don't want to know how watches are made.
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A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
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