110+ G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Quotes On Humanity, Observational And Satirical

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg was a German scientist and satirist. He was a professor of physics at the University of Göttingen and made important contributions to the fields of mathematics, philosophy, and natural science. He is also known for his satirical commentaries on current events and popular culture, which were published posthumously in his book, Waste Books. Following is our collection on famous quotes by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg on humanity, love, observational.

Top 10 G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Quotes

1. Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.
2. 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.
3. Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. In each of us there is a little of all of us.
10. The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Image Quotes

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Short Quotes

• The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done.
• We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
• A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
• To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
• If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
• The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.
• Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.
• He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.
• A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
• The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Quotes About Humanity

The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Quotes About Love

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage -- he won't encounter many rivals. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Man loves company, even if it is only that of a smoldering candle. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Quotes About People

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Quotes About Reason

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) 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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Quotes About Books

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar -- that I call an achievement. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can not expect an apostle to peer out. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) 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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Quotes About Truth

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg Famous Quotes And Sayings

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) 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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) 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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) 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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Ideas too are a life and a world. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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? — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

A man is never more serious than when he praise himself. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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... — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) 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. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) 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... — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war? — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes. — G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

Life Lessons by G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

1. G. C. Lichtenberg believed in the power of curiosity and creativity, encouraging us to explore our own potential and to never be afraid to ask questions.
2. He also taught us to be mindful of our words and actions, emphasizing the importance of using our words wisely.
3. Finally, he believed in the power of perseverance and hard work, showing us that dedication to our goals can lead to success.