Famous Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotations

First 1 Last 
"What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"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."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"Man is a gregarious animal and much more so in his mind than in his body. A golden rule; judge men not by their opinions but by what their opinions have made of them."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes!"
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes"
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"When a book and a head collide and there is a hollow sound, is it always from the book?"
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"With most people unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another."
by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"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."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"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."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Man loves company, even if it is only that of a smoldering candle."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"To be content with life -- or to live merrily, rather --all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?"
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"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."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"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."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"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."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
"Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much."
by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg


Hire a Writer