10 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes on Knowledge

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg quotes on knowledge

18. 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.

19. Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

30. When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

35. 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.

63. 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.

70. Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

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

107. 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.

131. If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

173. German Wikipedia