Just a thought

The welfare of the people in particular
has always been the alibi of tyrants,
and it provides the further advantage
of giving the servants of tyranny
a good conscience.

Albert Camus

Just a thought

Knowledge is not an abstract homogeneous good, of which there cannot be enough. Beyond the last flutter of actual or possible significance, pedantry begins.
Jacques Barzun

[...] to be anything but ...

[...] the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day ; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men ; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but an earthworm*."
Thoreau, Walden

* Err, don't know how it could happen. Please replace an earthworm by a machine.

I've been reading a lot

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.
Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Phew! And nowadays?

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie
make a writer.
Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Heaven - that was easy!

Of all the inventions of man I doubt
whether any was more easily accomplished
than that of a Heaven.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

One for both the naive and the liar

There are people who believe
everything is sane and sensible
that is done with a solemn face.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Not necessarily, hm?

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Sometimes it's nice to imagine hell exists

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those
who in times of great moral crisis
maintain their neutrality.
Dante Alighieri

The Secret of Kiltish Powers

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.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Perhaps, perhaps

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.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Rational free spirits ...

... are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoitre the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

C'est ça!

:)

"When vanity is not prompting us, we have little to say."
La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

Don't you deserve them?

Those who would give up essential liberty
to purchase a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Well, so to speak

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Yes!

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Mirrors do seldom err

A book is a mirror:
if an ape looks into it
an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Ah ... now ... I see ...

There are very many people who read simply
to prevent themselves from thinking.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

... and deliver us from hypocrisy

World leaders convened at the FAO Headquarters for the World Summit on Food Security today unanimously adopted a declaration pledging renewed commitment to eradicate hunger from the face of the earth sustainably and at the earliest date.
The article ends:
Addressing FAO's Member States in all their official languages, the Pope concluded: "God bless your efforts to ensure that all people are given their daily bread."

Addressing the Pope, I conclude:

Cha líonann beannacht bolg.

A blessing does not fill a belly.

Sláinte, Sire Schiller!

Geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit!
Give freedom of thought! *
Friedrich von Schiller , November 10th, 1759 - May 9th, 1805

To put it straight: In case I were an autograph collector, I'd give 100 Grass' and Goethes for one Schiller.

* The quotation above is incomplete?

You miss one word?
The word "Sire"?

Hm, let's look at Don Carlos, 3,10 on page 176 of Volume one of the complete edition from 1886, published by A. Warschauer Verlag, Berlin.

It's obviously neither Geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit, Sire! nor Sire, geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit!.

Why would most quotation collections then offer Sire, give freedom of thought! ?

Let's look a bit closer.

See the 'stage directions' after Gedankenfreiheit?

1. in the same line: Sich ihm zu Füßen werfend = Throwing himself at his feet
2. König / King (überrascht, etc = surprised, etc.)

Is it possible that some translator(s) in later (erroneously) added König / Sire to Marquis Posa's speech, and thus it became Sire, give freedom of thought?

Well, anyway, Friedrich, both we shall be able to live with this, shan't we? :)

In this sense [raising my tin chalice from 1905]: Sláinte, Sire!