Top 100 Georg Lichtenberg Quotes

#1. To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #1780
#2. How happily some people would live if they troubled themselves as little about other people's business as about their own.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #3168
#3. Many a man who is willing to be shot for his belief in a miracle would have doubted, had he been present at the miracle itself.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #3510
#4. Ambition and suspicion always go together.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #5602
#5. With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #7954
#6. There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #11321
#7. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #17000
#8. One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #19818
#9. Never trust a man who lays his hand on his heart when he assures you of anything.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #28507
#10. The celebrated painter Gainsborough got as much pleasure from seeing violins as from hearing them.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #30314
#11. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #30695
#12. A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #37351
#13. Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #47579
#14. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #74616
#15. The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the philosophy itself. When we ask the time, we don't want to know how watches are made.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #79976
#16. 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 C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #95853
#17. A good part of the fame of most celebrated men is due to the shortsightedness of their admirers

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #102904
#18. Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #102955
#19. Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #111158
#20. Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #113950
#21. What we are able to judge with feeling is very little; the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #116978
#22. 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. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #120626
#23. Everything that matters in life flows through tubes.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #120709
#24. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #127437
#25. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #127807
#26. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #142018
#27. It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #152009
#28. There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #171096
#29. To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #176251
#30. People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #178552
#31. Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #186067
#32. It is impossible to have bad taste, but many people have none at all.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #196902
#33. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #198048
#34. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #198355
#35. A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #211278
#36. I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #214546
#37. Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #239090
#38. Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #240807
#39. How might letters be most efficiently copied so that the blind might read them with their fingers?

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #241004
#40. Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #248882
#41. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #249356
#42. When they have discovered truth in nature they fling it into a book, where it is even worse hands.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #249422
#43. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #249881
#44. The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #252894
#45. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #255134
#46. To see every day how people get the name 'genius' just as the wood-lice in the cellar the name 'millipede'-not because they have that many feet, but because most people don't want to count to 14-this has had the result that I don't believe anyone any more without checking.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #262566
#47. God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #263735
#48. It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #268031
#49. With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #286906
#50. Men still have to be governed by deception.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #304567
#51. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #315685
#52. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #315825
#53. Most men of education are more superstitious than they admit - nay, than they think.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #318183
#54. The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #321864
#55. Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #330385
#56. If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #330870
#57. He who says he hates all kinds of flattery, and says so in earnest, has undoubtedly not as yet become acquainted with all kinds of it, whether in substance or in form.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #331410
#58. A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #336421
#59. We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #337155
#60. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #340646
#61. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #342599
#62. If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #343333
#63. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #346887
#64. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #349073
#65. In each of us there is a little of all of us.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #372589
#66. What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #375530
#67. Knowledge acquired too rapidly and without being personally supplemented is never very productive.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #376658
#68. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #377931
#69. One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #378622
#70. There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #383280
#71. In every man there is something of all men.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #383394
#72. It is a great shame; most of our words are misused tools / which often still smell of the mud in which previous owners / desecrated them.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #390774
#73. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #393454
#74. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #404714
#75. Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #408547
#76. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #410051
#77. Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #410646
#78. You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #416778
#79. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #419020
#80. Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #425249
#81. Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence "Two times two is four."

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #452424
#82. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #453886
#83. I forget the greater part of what I read, but all the same it nourishes my mind.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #455595
#84. Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #455698
#85. What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #463457
#86. Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #464569
#87. 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 C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #466976
#88. If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #469166
#89. I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #470721
#90. Delicacy in woman is strength.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #476417
#91. Ideas too are a life and a world.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #480901
#92. Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #487338
#93. One use of dreams is that, unprejudiced by our often forced and artificial reflections, they represent the impartial outcome of our entire being.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #494668
#94. Nothing is more inimical to the progress of science than the belief that we know what we do not yet know.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #497934
#95. 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

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #499955
#96. Universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #500005
#97. Imagine the world so greatly magnified that particles of light look like twenty-four-pound cannon balls.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #502697
#98. In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #503725
#99. The most entertaining surface on earth is the human face.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #516381
#100. Is it not strange that mankind should so willingly battle for religion and so unwillingly live according to its precepts?

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Georg Lichtenberg Quotes #516519

Famous Authors

Popular Topics

Scroll to Top