Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes & Sayings

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

I forget most of what I read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Just as there are polysyllabic words that say very little, so there are also monosyllabic words of infinite meaning. — 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

To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

To make clever people believe we are what we are not is in most instances harder than really to become what we want to seem to be. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I would give something to know for precisely whom the deeds were really done, of which it is publicly stated they were done 'for the Fatherland'. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

When they have discovered truth in nature they fling it into a book, where it is even worse hands. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. — Georg Christoph 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 Christoph Lichtenberg

To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one. — 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

If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Everything that matters in life flows through tubes. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Many are less fortunate than you' may not be a roof to live under, but it will serve to retire beneath in the event of a shower. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

For the loss of those we have loved there is no alleviation but time and carefully and rationally chosen diversions such as will not cause our heart to reproach us. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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

We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

In the weak, lack of strength to defend oneself passes over into complaining. This can be observed in children when they are mistreated by bigger children; but the best always stay obstinately and defiantly silent. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

It is impossible to have bad taste, but many people have none at all. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Every condition of the soul has its own sign and expression ... So you will see how hard it is to seem original without being so. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

First we have to believe, and then we believe. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Is it not strange that men are so keen to fight for religion and so unkeen to live according to its precepts? — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Is our conception of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility? — Georg Christoph 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 Christoph Lichtenberg

You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Some people come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede
not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above 14. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

You believe 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

Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind. — 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

Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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 Christoph Lichtenberg

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

If we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Nothing is more inimical to the progress of science than the belief that we know what we do not yet know. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?

{Said in a letter to Voltaire} — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called "Damn It". — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

That there are a hundred with wit for one with understanding is a true proposition with which many witless Dummkopf consoles himself.The Dummkopf should also reflect that there also a hundred possessing neither wit nor understanding for every man possessing wit . — 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

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

One of our forefathers must have read a forbidden book. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is that they must change if they are to get better. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

In his Comedy, Dante Alighieri names Virgil, with many tokens of respect, as his teacher, and yet as Herr Meinhard remarks, makes such ill use of him: clear proof that even in the days of Dante one praised the ancients without knowing why. This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg