Georg C. Lichtenberg quotes
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“It thunders, howls, roars, hisses, whistles, blusters, hums, growls, rumbles, squeaks, groans, sings, crackles, cracks, rattles, flickers, clicks, snarls, tumbles, whimpers, whines, rustles, murmurs, crashes, clucks, to gurgle, tinkles, blows, snores, claps, to lisp, to cough, it boils, to scream, to weep, to sob, to croak, to stutter, to lisp, to coo, to breathe, to clash, to bleat, to neigh, to grumble, to scrape, to bubble. These words, and others like them, which express sounds are more than mere symbols: they are a kind of hieroglyphics for the ear.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.”
-- Georg C. LichtenbergSource : "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook D 5, 1799.
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“A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.”
-- Georg C. LichtenbergSource : "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook H 7, 1799.
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“Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.”
-- Georg C. LichtenbergSource : "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook C 33, 1799.
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“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 C. LichtenbergSource : "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook E 55, 1799.
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“If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.”
-- Georg C. LichtenbergSource : "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook D 96, 1799.
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“Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“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.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.”
-- Georg C. 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.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Men still have to be governed by deception.”
-- Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg -
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“If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve”
-- Georg C. LichtenbergSource : "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook C 54, 1799.
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“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.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.”
-- Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg -
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“The "second sight" possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“The lower classes of men, though they do not think it worthwhile to record what they perceive, nevertheless perceive everything that is worth noting; the difference between them and a man of learning often consists in nothing more than the latter's facility for expression.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“One of our forefathers must have read a forbidden book.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“One has to do something new in order to see something new.”
-- Georg C. LichtenbergSource : "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook J 1770, 1799.
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“They do not think, therefore they are not.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“It is astonishing how much the word infinitely is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, etc. The concept must have something pleasing about it, or its misuse could not have become so general.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Ask yourself always: how can this be done better?”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“How might letters be most efficiently copied so that the blind might read them with their fingers?”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“The drive to propagate our race has also propagated a lot of other things”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Do not take too artificial a view of mankind but judge them from a natural standpoint, deeming them neither over good nor over bad.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“The rules of grammar are mere human statutes, which is why when he speaks out of the possessed the Devil himself speaks bad Latin.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Human pride is a strange thing; it cannot easily be suppressed, and if you stop up hole A will peep forth again in a twinkling from another hole B, and if this is closed it is ready to come out at hole C, and so on.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“The girl who reveals herself heart and soul to her friend reveals the secrets of the entire sex; for every girl is the guardian of the feminine mysteries.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“He who understands the wise is wise already.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“The grave is still the best shelter against the storms of destiny.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“It is in most cases more difficult to make intelligent people believe that you are what you are not, than really to become what you would appear to be.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“One can live in this world on soothsaying but not on truth saying.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“I forget the greater part of what I read, but all the same it nourishes my mind.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Superstition originates among ordinary people in the early and all too zealous instruction they receive in religion: they hear of mysteries, miracles, deeds of the Devil, and consider it very probable that things of this sort could occur in everything anywhere.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“God, who winds up our sundials ...”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“Imagine the world so greatly magnified that particles of light look like twenty-four-pound cannon balls.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“What we have to discover for ourselves leaves behind in our mind a pathway that can be used on another occasion.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.”
-- Georg C. LichtenbergSource : Thomas Reid, Ronald E. Beanblossom, Keith Lehrer (1983). “Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays”, p.129, Hackett Publishing
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“Above all things expand the frontiers of science: without this the rest counts for nothing.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown...”
-- Georg C. 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.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“An hour-glass is a reminder not only of time's quick flight, but also of the dust to which we must at last return”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Great men too make mistakes, and many among them do it so often that one is almost tempted to call them little men.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Everyone is perfectly willing to learn from unpleasant experience - if only the damage of the first lesson could be repaired.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Perhaps pure reason without heart would never have thought of God.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“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 C. Lichtenberg -
“People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“Probably no invention came more easily to man than heaven.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.”
-- Georg C. 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.”
-- Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg -
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“Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“I have never yet met anyone who did not think it was an agreeable sensation to cut tinfoil with scissors.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Nowadays beautiful women are counted among the talents of their husbands.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense.”
-- Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg -
“The course of the seasons is a piece of clockwork, with a cuckoo to call when it is spring.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“A man has virtues enough if he deserves pardon for his faults on account of them.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the secret desires, of all enlightened Europeans are deflected to the west, like our magnetic needles.”
-- Georg C. 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 C. 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 C. Lichtenberg -
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“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 C. Lichtenberg -
“If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.”
-- Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg -
“Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about something without understanding it.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?”
-- Georg C. 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 C. LichtenbergSource : "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook B 22, 1799.
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“The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, "bread-bread-fame" or "fame-fame-bread.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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“He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want?”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
“God creates the animals, man creates himself.”
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
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