Georg C Lichtenberg - Collected Quotes

"Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook C, 1772-1773)

"The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook C, 1772-1773)

"Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook D, 1773-1775)

"We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook H, 1784-1788)

"The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook H, 1784-1788)

"A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook J, 1789-1793)

"Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates." (Georg C Lichtenberg, Notebook J, 1789-1793)

"There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly." (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook K, 1789-1793)

"All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true." (Georg C Lichtenberg)

"Knowledge acquired too rapidly and without being personally supplemented is never very productive."

"The greatest things in the world are brought about by other things which we count as nothing: little causes we overlook but which at length accumulate." (Georg C Lichtenberg)

"The way to determine the secret workings of Nature is from analogous cases where one has caught her in act." (Georg C Lichtenberg)