Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

215 Sourced Quotes

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
There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points "born" and "died" farther away from one another... The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills they should be, and this method is for the philosophers.

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
What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Nowadays we already have books about books and descriptions of descriptions.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever.... Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later.

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?

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.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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