Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

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Georg C. Lichtenberg

Profession : Scientist

Birth : July 1, 1742

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.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

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 me.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.

Georg C. 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.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. 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.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. 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?

Georg C. 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.

Georg C. 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.

Georg C. 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 C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg