Quotes By Georg C. Lichtenberg

The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.

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.

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.

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.

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

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

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?

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.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

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.

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

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.

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.

We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.

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

The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.

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.

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

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

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.

The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.