"What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?"

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Science See all quotes by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg →

React to this quote

More by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.”

“Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.”

“There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.”

“There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.”

“What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...”

“There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Could not a boy be taught the elements of astronomy at the sole cost of using his eyes and his brain; taught slowly, certainly, and not wearied with too much at once? Some would learn more than others…"

— George Long (scholar)

Literature1800–1879

#knowledge

"This grasping of the whole is obviously the aim of science as well, but it is a goal that necessarily lies very far off because science, whenever possible, proceeds experimentally and in all cases sta…"

— Carl Jung

Psychology1852–1924

#science

"I don't guess anybody would think much of what Joe did nowadays, including myself. But he was supposed to be a leader, so he had to live by the rules. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and it…"

— Bear Bryant

Military1913–1983

#leadership

"So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We…"

— Barack Obama

Politics1961

#writing