Quotes by
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg |
1742-1799 , German author of maxims
German scientist, satirist, and writer of aphorisms, best known for his ridicule of metaphysical and romantic excesses. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany.
Today, he is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called Sudelbücher, a description modeled on the English bookkeeping term "scrapbooks",and for his discovery of the strange tree-like electrical discharge patterns now called Lichtenberg figures.
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Quotations
| • | That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim. 10 |
| • | 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. 10 |
| • | The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth. 7 |
| • | Nothing contributes more to a person's peace of mind than having no opinions at all. 7 |
| • | The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing. 7 |
| • | Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him. 7 |
| • | Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own. 6 |
| • | A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books. 5 |
| • | We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest. 5 |
| • | A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get. 5 |
| • | The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use. 5 |
| • | It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard. 5 |
| • | Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much. 4 |
| • | What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others. 4 |
| • | 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. 4 |
| • | I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up. 4 |
| • | 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. 4 |
| • | If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards. 4 |
| • | One has to do something new in order to see something new. 4 |
| • | 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. 4 |
| • | God created man in his own image, says the Bible; the philosophers do the exact opposite, they create God in theirs. 4 |
| • | Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together. 4 |
| • | A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. 4 |
| • | The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery. 3 |
| • | There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking. 3 |
| • | I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too. 3 |
| • | Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous. 3 |
| • | There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. 3 |
| • | A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. 3 |
| • | Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age. 3 |
| • | A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves. 3 |
| • | The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle. 3 |
| • | Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight. 3 |
| • | After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility? 3 |
| • | 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. 3 |
| • | There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. 3 |
| • | First we have to believe, and then we believe. 3 |
| • | The inclination of people to consider small things as important has produced many great things. 2 |
| • | To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so. 2 |
| • | Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial. 2 |
| • | To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite. 2 |
| • | Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and at times—and this is the worst of all—before we have new ones. 2 |
| • | Where the frontier of science once was is now the center. 2 |
| • | Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older. 2 |
| • | It is impossible to have bad taste, but many people have none at all. 2 |
| • | To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one. 2 |
| • | 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. 2 |
| • | With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another. 2 |
| • | The construction of the universe is certainly very much easier to explain than is that of the plant. 2 |
