"The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things"
About this Quote
Pettiness, Lichtenberg suggests, is one of civilization's stealth engines. The line turns our usual self-image upside down: we like to credit "vision" and "genius" for big achievements, but he points to the fussy, almost embarrassing habit of treating the small as urgent. That's not just a joke at human expense; it's a diagnosis of how progress actually happens when you strip away the hero narrative.
As an Enlightenment-era scientist and master aphorist, Lichtenberg knew that discovery is rarely a thunderbolt. It's a notebook full of marginalia: tiny discrepancies that won't behave, measurements that are off by a hair, a pattern that nags at you. The "little things" are the grit in the mind's shoe. Most people want to ignore them; a certain temperament can't. That compulsive attention can look trivial, even neurotic, until it accumulates into method, experiment, and eventually a breakthrough. His phrasing makes that alchemy feel inevitable: "has produced" reads like a natural law, not a motivational slogan.
The subtext is sharper than it first appears. He's also poking at our moral pretensions. We often dress obsession up as principle after the fact, but much of what gets built - institutions, technologies, even art - starts as someone being unable to let a minor irritation go. Lichtenberg isn't excusing small-mindedness; he's reframing it as raw material. Greatness, in this view, is less a soaring trait than a well-aimed fixated mind.
As an Enlightenment-era scientist and master aphorist, Lichtenberg knew that discovery is rarely a thunderbolt. It's a notebook full of marginalia: tiny discrepancies that won't behave, measurements that are off by a hair, a pattern that nags at you. The "little things" are the grit in the mind's shoe. Most people want to ignore them; a certain temperament can't. That compulsive attention can look trivial, even neurotic, until it accumulates into method, experiment, and eventually a breakthrough. His phrasing makes that alchemy feel inevitable: "has produced" reads like a natural law, not a motivational slogan.
The subtext is sharper than it first appears. He's also poking at our moral pretensions. We often dress obsession up as principle after the fact, but much of what gets built - institutions, technologies, even art - starts as someone being unable to let a minor irritation go. Lichtenberg isn't excusing small-mindedness; he's reframing it as raw material. Greatness, in this view, is less a soaring trait than a well-aimed fixated mind.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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