Georg C. Lichtenberg

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

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.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

The great rule: 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.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown...

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

— Georg C. Lichtenberg