Brief biography
Brief biography
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Other Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes
- We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy — at least until we have become as clever as they are. - View Quote Details on We are obliged to regard many of our original minds…
- A great speech is easy to learn by heart and a great poem even easier. How hard it would be to memorize as many words linked together senselessly, or a speech in a foreign tongue! Sense and understanding thus come to the aid of memory. Sense is order and order is in the last resort conformity with our nature. When we speak rationally we are only speaking in accordance with the nature of our being. That is why we devise genera and species in the case of plants and animals. The hypotheses we make belong here too: we are obliged to have them because otherwise we would unable to retain things… The question is, however, whether everything is legible to us. Certainly experiment and reflection enable us to introduce a significance into what is not legible, either to us or at all: thus we see faces or landscapes in the sand, though they are certainly not there. The introducion of symmetries belongs here too, silhouettes in inkblots, etc. Likewise the gradation we establish in the order of creatures: all this is not in the things but in us. In general we cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing. - View Quote Details on A great speech is easy to learn by heart and…
- Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age. - View Quote Details on Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if…
- People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws. - View Quote Details on People often become scholars for the same reason they become…
- The late M. who had a Catholic maid, once told me entirely bona fide: This person is a Catholic, it is true, but she is an honest, good soul. Recently she committed a perjury on my behalf. - View Quote Details on The late M. who had a Catholic maid, once told…
- I have scattered seeds of ideas on almost every page which, if they fall on the right soil, may grow into chapters and even whole dissertations. - View Quote Details on I have scattered seeds of ideas on almost every page…
- The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it. - View Quote Details on The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too…
- 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. - View Quote Details on If we make a couple of discoveries here and there…
- Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous. - View Quote Details on Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can…
- We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest. - View Quote Details on We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding…
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