Quotes by Lichtenberg, Georg C.

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on applause   

"Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on aristocracy   

"A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on literature   

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on literature   

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on mathematics   

"Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on women   

"To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on mistakes   

"Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on morality   

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on murder   

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on nature   

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on necessity   

"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on world   

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on obscurity   

"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..."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on opinions   

"Man is a gregarious animal and much more so in his mind than in his body. A golden rule; judge men not by their opinions but by what their opinions have made of them."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on opinions   

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on opinions   

"A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on oppression   

"We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on originality
3 fans of this quote   

"Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on passion
3 fans of this quote   

"In each of us there is a little of all of us."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on people
7 fans of this quote   

"I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on people
4 fans of this quote   

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on philosophers and philosophy   

"If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on philosophers and philosophy
3 fans of this quote   

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on astronomy
3 fans of this quote   

"A man is never more serious than when he praise himself."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on praise   

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on preachers and preaching   

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on prejudice   

"The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on propaganda
5 fans of this quote   

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on prophecy   

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on prophecy   

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on public office   

"If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on publishing and publishers   

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on reason   

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on rules   

"It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both in him."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on sarcasm   

"One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on scholars and scholarship   

"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."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on scholars and scholarship   

"The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on science   

"There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on science   

"He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on self-improvement