Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes - Page 8

I have often noticed that when people come to understand a mathematical proposition in some other way than that of the ordinary demonstration, they promptly say, "Oh, I see. That's how it must be." This is a sign that they explain it to themselves from within their own system.

No despotism is so formidable as that of a religion or a scientific system.

One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.

I am grateful that I am not as judgmental as all those censorious, self-righteous people around me. In each of us there is a little of all of us.

Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking.

We judge nothing so hastily as character, and yet there is nothing over which we should be more cautious.... I have always found that the so-called bad people improve on closer acquaintance, while the good fall off.

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

Nowadays beautiful women are counted among the talents of their husbands.

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

We have to believe that everything has a cause, as the spider spins its web in order to catch flies. But it does this before it knows there are such things as flies.

It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

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.

If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

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

So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.

If nature be regarded as the teacher and we poor human beings as her pupils, the human race presents a very curious picture. We all sit together at a lecture and possess the necessary principles for understanding it, yet we always pay more attention to the chatter of our fellow students than to the lecturer's discourse. Or, if our neighbor copies something down, we sneak it from him, stealing what he himself may have heard imperfectly, and add it to our own errors of spelling and opinion.

If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

Human pride is a strange thing; it cannot easily be suppressed, and if you stop up hole A will peep forth again in a twinkling from another hole B, and if this is closed it is ready to come out at hole C, and so on.

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.