German - Scientist | July 1, 1742 - February 24, 1799
We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
BetterSoldiersAlwaysHandfulThan
It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.
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It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.
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It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.
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With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.
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Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.
TruthPeopleBelieveObscureDelight
What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.
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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.
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Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.
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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.
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Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.
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