Georg Christoph Lichtenberg citations (151 citations, Page 2)

H 10
Variant translation: He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage — he won't encounter many rivals.
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook H (1784-1788)

“Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

F 78
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

“The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

F 44
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

“To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

G 30
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

“Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

J 77
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)

“One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

J 85
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)

“Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

D 5
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)

“If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever…. Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

F 82
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

“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.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

K 39
Variant translation: Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)

“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…”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

B 52
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

“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.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

L24
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)

“We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

H 4
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook H (1784-1788)

“It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

A 11
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook A (1765-1770)

“To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

D 96
Variant translation: To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)

“Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and at times—and this is the worst of all—before we have new ones.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

So wie wir ein Paar Hosen verwachsen, so verwachsen wir Umgang, Bibliotheken, Grundsätze und dergleichen, zuweilen, ehe sie abgenutzt sind und zuweilen, welches der schlimmste Fall ist, ehe wir neue haben. <br class="br">Gedanken, Satiren, Fragmente (Thoughts, Satires, Fragments), Volume 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=azM4AQAAIAAJ&q=%22So+wie+wir+ein+Paar%22+%22Hosen+verwachsen+so+verwachsen+wir+Umgang+Bibliotheken+Grunds%C3%A4tze+und+dergleichen+zuweilen+ehe+sie+abgenutzt+sind+und+zuweilen+welches+der+schlimmste+Fall+ist+ehe+wir+neue+haben%22&pg=PA14#v=onepage (1907)

“What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

G 7
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

“Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

L 44
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)

“The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.”

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

J 115
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)