“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 Christoph Lichtenberg

K 51
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thi…" by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 137
German scientist, satirist 1742–1799

Related quotes

Evelyn Waugh photo

“Of children as of procreation— the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Letter to Nancy Mitford, May 5, 1954, cited from Mark Amory (ed.) The Letters of Evelyn Waugh (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 423
"The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable" is sometimes attributed to Lord Chesterfield (British statesman, diplomat and wit, 1694-1773), but has not been found in his works.

“To procreate is thus to engage in a kind of Russian roulette, but one in which the "gun" is aimed not at oneself but instead at one's offspring. You trigger a new life and thereby subject that new life to the risk of unspeakable suffering.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

Source: Debating Procreation: Is It Wrong To Reproduce? (2015), p. 65

Thornton Wilder photo

“The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.”

Thornton Wilder book The Eighth Day

The Eighth Day (1967)

Simone Weil photo

“The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.”

Simone Weil book Waiting for God

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God
Source: Waiting for God

Philipp Mainländer photo

“And who is and should be a pessimist? He who is mature for death. He can love life so scarcely as he [the optimist] can depart from it. If he does not realize that he will survive in his children, his procreation loses its horrible character; but if he realizes it, he will recoil in horror from it, just like Humboldt noticing that it is paying dearly for a few minutes of pleasure with the torments that another being must endure perhaps for eighty years, and consider the procreation of children as a crime and justly so.”

Philipp Mainländer (1841–1876) German poet and philosopher

Source: Philosophie der Erlösung, Erster Band (2014), Metaphysik, § 21 ISBN 978-1494963262

Bertrand Russell photo

“Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 50
Context: My first advice (on how not to grow old) would be to choose you ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth, at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.

Walt Disney photo

“To me, today, at age sixty-one, all prayer, by the humble or highly placed, has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best human impulses which should bind us together for a better world.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

Deeds Rather Than Words (1963)
Context: To me, today, at age sixty-one, all prayer, by the humble or highly placed, has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best human impulses which should bind us together for a better world. Without such inspiration, we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish. But in our troubled time, the right of men to think and worship as their conscience dictates is being sorely pressed. We can retain these privileges only by being constantly on guard and fighting off any encroachment on these precepts. To retreat from any of the principles handed down by our forefathers, who shed their blood for the ideals we still embrace, would be a complete victory for those who would destroy liberty and justice for the individual.

Matsushita Konosuke photo

“It is a kind of law of nature. The goal one aims for can rarely be reached by a direct road.”

Matsushita Konosuke (1894–1989) Japanese businessman

Source: Quest for prosperity: the life of a Japanese industrialist. 1988, p. 47

Michel De Montaigne photo

“Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

Jerome Corsi photo

“Our founding fathers knew that if we went this direction, there was no more moral compass and you won’t be able to explain to your children — you’ll have to face the fact that we lost holding the line on one of the most principle issues in the Bible, and that is sex is not about fun. If you want to have fun, read a book, go see a movie. Sex is about the procreation of children. It’s a sacred responsibility that is meant by God to have men and women commit their lifetime to children.”

Jerome Corsi (1946) American conservative author

"Tea party speaker: ‘Well, they want to call me a racist? Go ahead’" http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/28/tea-party-speaker-well-they-want-to-call-me-a-racist-go-ahead/ www.rawstory.com (2013-8-23)

Related topics