Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.
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Variant translation: Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
» Georg Christoph Lichtenberg - all quotes »
To attract people, to win over people to that which I have realized as being true, that is called propaganda. In the beginning there is the understanding, this understanding uses propaganda as a tool to find those men, that shall turn understanding into politics. Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths. Those are found in other circumstances, I find them when thinking at my desk, but not in the meeting hall.
Joseph Goebbels
Though the day of my Destiny's over,
And the star of my Fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find.Lord Byron
Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.
Hyman G. Rickover
Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows the average guy can see better than he can think.
Anonymous
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph
Lichtenstein, Roy
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