Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes & Sayings

Man is perhaps half mind and half matter in the same way as the polyp is half plant and half animal. The strangest creatures are always found on the border lines of species. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Pain warns us not to exert our limbs to the point of breaking them. How much knowledge would we not need to recognize this by the exercise of mere reason. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear. — Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg

The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

There is something in the character of every man which cannot be broken in
the skeleton of his character; and to try to alter this is like training a sheep for draught purposes. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Everyone should study at least enough philosophy and belles-lettres to make his sexual experience more delectable. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

A man has virtues enough if he deserves pardon for his faults on account of them. — Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals. — Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg

The course of the seasons is a piece of clockwork, with a cuckoo to call when it is spring. — Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg

Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

No people are more conceited than those who depict their own feelings, especially if they happen to have a little prose at their command for the occasion. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Do not judge God's world from your own. Trim your own hedge as you wish and plant your flowers in the patterns you can understand, but do not judge the garden of nature from your little window box. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Ask yourself always: how can this be done better? — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Good taste is either that which agrees with my taste or that which subjects itself to the rule of reason. From this we can see how useful it is to employ reason in seeking out the laws of taste. — 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

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

We judge nothing so hastily as character, and yet there is nothing over which we should be more cautious ... I have always found that the so-called bad people improve on closer acquaintance, while the good fall off. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Man is a masterpiece of creation, if only because no amount of determinism can prevent him from believing that he acts as a free being. — 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

One should never trust a person who, while assuring you of something, puts his hands on his heart. — 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

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 C. Lichtenberg

Ideas too are a life and a world. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Probably no invention came more easily to man than heaven. — Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Many intelligent people, when about to write ... , force on their minds a certain notion about style, just as they screw up their faces when they sit for their portraits. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books. — 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

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 C. Lichtenberg

They do not think, therefore they are not. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

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. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

If brandy was made out of sparrows there would soon be no sparrows. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones? — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Ambition and suspicion always go together. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals. — 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

One has to do something new in order to see something new. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Knowledge acquired too rapidly and without being personally supplemented is never very productive. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

It is a dangerous thing for the perfecting of our minds to gain applause by works that do not call forth the whole of our energies; for in that case one generally comes to a standstill. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The highest point to which a weak but experienced mind can rise is detecting the weakness of better men. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

If an angel were to tell us about his philosophy, I believe many of his statements might well sound like '2 x 2= 13'. — 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

Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

How might letters be most efficiently copied so that the blind might read them with their fingers? — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

There can hardly be a stranger commodity in the world than books. Printed by people who don't understand them; sold by people who don't understand them; bound, criticized and read by people who don't understand them; and now even written by people who don't understand them. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Man is a masterpiece of creation ... — Georg C. Lichtenberg

To live when you do not want to is dreadful, but it would be even more terrible to be immortal when you did not want to be. As things are, however, the whole ghastly burden is suspended from me by a thread which I can cut in two with a penny-knife. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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 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

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 C. Lichtenberg

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Those who never have time do least — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

I forget the greater part of what I read, but all the same it nourishes my mind. — Georg C. 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 C. 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 C. Lichtenberg

Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

With God thoughts are colors, with us they are pigments-even the most abstract one may be accompanied by physical pain. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

The wisdom of providence is as much revealed in the rarity of genius, as in the circumstance that not everyone is deaf or blind. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing. — Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg

He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Above all things expand the frontiers of science: without this the rest counts for nothing. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Is it so unjust that a man should leave the world by the same gate through which he entered it? — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Men still have to be governed by deception. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

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