Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

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.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.

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.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.

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.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.

Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

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.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

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.

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.

Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.

Delicacy in woman is strength.

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears...as easily as we open and shut our eyes.

Some people come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede -- not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above 14.

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Ask yourself always: how can this be done better?

Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times - and this is the worst of all - before we have new ones.

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

Man is a masterpiece of creation . . .

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.

Nothing puts a greater obstacle in the way of the progress of knowledge than thinking that one knows what one does not yet know.

If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.

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.

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?

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.