Memorable Quotations from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Cristoph Lichtenberg (1742-99) was a German scientist and philosopher. His philosophical reputation rests on his aphorisms, which he accumulated in notebooks during his adult life. Lichtenberg believed that the purpose of philosophy was not to settle disagreements such as that between realism and idealism, but to allow us to get beyond them. He also wrote that his entire philosophy was a correction of linguistic usage. A number of his works are collected in The Lichtenberg Reader.