Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

215 Sourced Quotes

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Soothsayers make a better living in the world than truthsayers.

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
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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If nature be regarded as the teacher and we poor human beings as her pupils, the human race presents a very curious picture. We all sit together at a lecture and possess the necessary principles for understanding it, yet we always pay more attention to the chatter of our fellow students than to the lecturer's discourse.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I have often noticed that when people come to understand a mathematical proposition in some other way than that of the ordinary demonstration, they promptly say, "Oh, I see. That's how it must be." This is a sign that they explain it to themselves from within their own system.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.

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.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both in him.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. … 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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal.

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
It requires no especially great talent to write in such a way that another will be very hard put to it to understand what you have written.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Sense and understanding thus come to the aid of memory. Sense is order and order is in the last resort conformity with our nature. When we speak rationally we are only speaking in accordance with the nature of our being.

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A donkey appears to me like a horse translated into Dutch.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I made the journey to knowledge like dogs who go for walks with their masters, a hundred times forward and backward over the same territory; and when I arrived I was tired.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The ordinary man is ruined by the flesh lusting against the spirit; the scholar by the spirit lusting too much against the flesh.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
People don't like to choose lot #1 in a lottery. "Choose it," Reason cries loudly. "It has as good a chance of winning the 12,000 thalers as any other." "In Heaven's name don't choose it," a je ne sais quoi whispers. "There's no example of such little numbers being listed before great winnings." And actually no one takes it.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Is it not strange that mankind should so willingly battle for religion and so unwillingly live according to its precepts?

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg