Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

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Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Sudelbücher.)
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I forget most of what I read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
There is no mistaking a good book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to peer out.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
You believe I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called "Damn It".
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Aphorisms (Penguin Classics))
Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
To make a vow is a greater sin than to break one.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Is it not strange that men are so keen to fight for religion and so unkeen to live according to its precepts?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is impossible to have bad taste, but many people have none at all.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility? {Said in a letter to Voltaire}
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Reading means borrowing. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
To make clever people believe we are what we are not is in most instances harder than really to become what we want to seem to be.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Just as there are polysyllabic words that say very little, so there are also monosyllabic words of infinite meaning.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.
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.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Ein Buch ist ein Spiegel wenn ein Affe hineinsieht so kann kein Apostel heraus gucken.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
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.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Every condition of the soul has its own sign and expression...So you will see how hard it is to seem original without being so.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud.
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.
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.
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.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
The greatest things in the world are brought about by other things which we count as nothing: little causes we overlook but which at length accumulate
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It requires no especially great talent to write in such a way that another will be very hard put to it to understand what you have written
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
First we have to believe, and then we believe.
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.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Imaginas que yo persigo lo extraño por ignorancia de lo bello, pero no es así, ocurre que porque tu ignoras lo bello, yo busco lo extraño.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
...if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
He who is enamoured of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
Nothing is more inimical to the progress of science than the belief that we know what we do not yet know.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Aujourd'hui, on cherche partout à répandre le savoir; qui sait si, dans quelques siècles, il n'y aura pas des universités pour rétablir l'ancienne ignorance?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Dieses Und Jenes: Aufsätze Und Aphorismen)
In his Comedy, Dante Alighieri names Virgil, with many tokens of respect, as his teacher, and yet as Herr Meinhard remarks, makes such ill use of him: clear proof that even in the days of Dante one praised the ancients without knowing why. This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
It makes a great difference by what path we come to a knowledge of certain things. If we begin in our youth with metaphysics and religion we can easily proceed along a series of rational conclusions that will lead us to the immortality of the soul. Not every other path will lead to this, at least not quite so easily.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
Many are less fortunate than you’ may not be a roof to live under, but it will serve to retire beneath in the event of a shower.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I would give something to know for precisely whom the deeds were really done, of which it is publicly stated they were done 'for the Fatherland'.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
No es que los oráculos hayan dejado de hablar, sino que los hombres han dejado de escucharlos.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
For the loss of those we have loved there is no alleviation but time and carefully and rationally chosen diversions such as will not cause our heart to reproach us.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
Is our conception of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The most brightly colored birds sing the worst; the same goes for people.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Когато една книга ти се харесва все повече с течение на годините, това е верен признак, че тя е добра.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Книгата е огледало. И ако в него се огледа маймуна, то от него не може да погледне лик на апостол.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I believe that some of the greatest minds that ever lived had not read half as much and did not know nearly as much as some of our mediocre scholars. And some 20 of our verr mediocre scholars could have become greater men if they had not read so much.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Man sollte nie so viel zu tun haben, daß man zum zum Nachdenken keine Zeit mehr hat.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Kenntnis der Mittel ohne eine eigentliche Anwendung, ja ohne Gabe und Willen, sie anzuwenden, ist, was man jetzt gemeiniglich Gelehrsamkeit nennt.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Când ai de facut o lucrare, nu te gândi mereu la întregimea ei; executa fragmentul pe care-l ai în fata, si când ai terminat cu el, mergi mai departe
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
One of our forefathers must have read a forbidden book.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)
A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Wenn ein Buch und ein Kopf zusammenstoßen und es klingt hohl, ist das allemal im Buch?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Има хора, които си въобразяват, че всичко, което се прави със сериозен вид, е разумно.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Думата "трудност" не трябва да съществува за творческия ум. Долу тази дума!
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Каквито са хората, такива са и книгите, които пишат.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Най-опасната лъжа е леко изпопачената истина.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Ако главата и книгата се сблъскат и се чуе звук на празно тяло, винаги ли е виновна книгата?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Wouldn't things look much better for the human race if we no longer had history, at least no political history? The human being then would act more in accordance with the energies he possesses at any given time; for as things stand today, the example that now and then makes one person better makes a thousand others worse.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If we put aside the self-awareness standard -- and really, how arbitrary and arrogant is that, to take the attribute of consciousness we happen to possess over all creatures and set it atop the hierarchy,  proclaiming it the very definition of consciousness (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg wrote something wise in his notebooks, to the effect of: only a man can draw a self-portrait, but only a man wants to) -- it becomes possible to say at least the following: the overwhelming tendency of all this scientific work, of its results, has been toward more consciousness. More species having it, and species having more of it than assumed. This was made boldly clear when the 'Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness' pointed out that those 'neurological substrates' necessary for consciousness (whatever 'consciousness' is) belong to 'all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses.' The animal kingdom is symphonic with mental activity, and of its millions of wavelengths, we’re born able to understand the minutest sliver. The least we can do is have a proper respect for our ignorance. "The philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote an essay in 1974 titled, 'What Is It Like To Be a Bat?,' in which he put forward perhaps the least overweening, most useful definition of 'animal consciousness' ever written, one that channels Spinoza’s phrase about 'that nature belonging to him wherein he has his being.' Animal consciousness occurs, Nagel wrote, when 'there is something that it is to be that organism -- something it islike for the organism.' The strangeness of his syntax carries the genuine texture of the problem. We’ll probably never be able to step far enough outside of our species-reality to say much about what is going on with them, beyond saying how like or unlike us they are. Many things are conscious on the earth, and we are one, and our consciousness feels likethis; one of the things it causes us to do is doubt the existence of the consciousness of the other millions of species. But it also allows us to imagine a time when we might stop doing that.
John Jeremiah Sullivan
La doctrina de la libertad humana sólo prueba que una hipotésis errónea es a veces preferible a otra exacta. El hombre, por cierto, no es libre: pero hace falta haber estudado filosofia muy profundamente para que una concepción de esta naturaleza no nos llame a engaño. Pero éste es un estudio para el cual dispone de tiempo y paciencia sólo un hombre entre mil, y entre los cientos que cuentam com tiempo y paciencia, sólo habrá uno, quizás, que comprenda el sentido de la cosa. Y como las aparencias le son favorables a la doctrina de la libertad, ésta es la más corriente, por ser la más cómoda, y así seguirá siendo en el futuro.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
No trates de mostrarte excesivamente ingenioso para evitar que un hombre por naturaleza ingenioso perciba por casualidad que en realidad eres exactamente como quisieras que él fuera.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Ich kann freilich nicht sagen, ob es besser werden wird wenn es anders wird; aber so viel kann ich sagen, es muß anders werden, wenn es gut werden soll.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Если человек пишет, то пишет он хорошо или плохо - видно сразу. Но если человек ничего не пишет и сидит смирно, то делает он это благодаря уму или по невежеству - вот этого не в состоянии распознать ни один смертный.
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.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (The Waste Books)