8 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes on History

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg quotes on history

4. Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?

53. The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

77. The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

109. The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

145. Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.

161. We must not seek to abstract from the busts of the great Greeks and Romans rules for the visible form of genius as long as we cannot contrast them with Greek blockheads.

172. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg : Experimental Physics from the Spirit of Aphorism (PDF)

178. 1927 General Electric Review Article about Lichtenberg Figures