“The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern”

—  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Referring to a diagrammatic "Compass of Motives", as quoted in Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten [Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious] (1905) by Sigmund Freud, as translated by James Strachey (1960), p. 101; also quoted by Freud in an open letter to Albert Einstein, Why War? (1933).
Variant translation: The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, "food-food-fame" or "fame-fame-food".
Context: The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, "bread-bread-fame" or "fame-fame-bread."

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 137
German scientist, satirist 1742–1799

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