Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

215 Sourced Quotes

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient. … To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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.

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.

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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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 me.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Microscopes should be invented for every kind of investigation and, where that is impossible, experiments should be conducted on a large scale. This is the only direct road to new discovery.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
You believe that I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The greatest things in the world are brought about by other things which we count as nothing: little causes we overlook but which at length accumulate.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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
Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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.

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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If an angel were to tell us about his philosophy, I believe many of his statements might well sound like '2 × 2=13'

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Nothing contributes more to peace of soul than having no opinion at all.

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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg