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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

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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
Instead
Explained
Quite
Brains
Brain
Search
Giving
Explain
Racked
Proof
Constrained
Discover
Induced
Motivation
Proofs
Perhaps
Compulsion

More quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

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After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?
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A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.
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He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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
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Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times - and this is the worst of all - before we have new ones.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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In each of us there is a little of all of us.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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He who says he hates all kinds of flattery, and says so in earnest, has undoubtedly not as yet become acquainted with all kinds of it, whether in substance or in form.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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In every man there is something of all men.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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How happily some people would live if they troubled themselves as little about other people's business as about their own.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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
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The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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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
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A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.
Georg C. Lichtenberg