Georg C. Lichtenberg Believe Quotations

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

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.

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them.

First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.

There are people who can believe anything they wish. What lucky creatures!

There are many who believe that 'Marriage is not a word - it is a sentence!' Whether you are indeed 'married' or if you are 'single', I am sure that funny quotes on weddings and marriages always tend to put a wicked smile to the face. It is often said that 'People who are married are often desperate to get out of it and people who are single can't wait to get in!'

There is a great difference between believing in something and believing in it again.

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. ... It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus , one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar that I call an achievement.

I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.

You believe I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.

To see every day how people get the name 'genius' just as the wood-lice in the cellar the name 'millipede'-not because they have that many feet, but because most people don't want to count to 14-this has had the result that I don't believe anyone any more without checking.

To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.

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.

If an angel were to tell us about his philosophy, I believe many of his statements might well sound like '2 x 2= 13'.

Man is a masterpiece of creation, if only because no amount of determinism can prevent him from believing that he acts as a free being.

I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.

We have to believe that everything has a cause, as the spider spins its web in order to catch flies. But it does this before it knows there are such things as flies.

The "second sight" possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers.

It is in most cases more difficult to make intelligent people believe that you are what you are not, than really to become what you would appear to be.