The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Simplicity
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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Religion, Christians, Christianity
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 Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Style, Taste
A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Art, Literature, Books
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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Cynicism
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 Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Belief, Thoughts
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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Murder
The fly that doesn’t want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Courage
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
It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can’t do anything from early habit.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Cunning, Intelligence
If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Idealism, Ideals
In each of us there is a little of all of us.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: People
Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Theory, Assumptions
Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Liberalism
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Perspective
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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Doubt, Skepticism
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
Topics: Assumptions, Theory
First we have to believe, and then we believe.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Belief
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.
—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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Foolishness, Fools
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage—he won’t encounter many rivals.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Temptation
Ideas too are a life and a world.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Ideas
The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Politics
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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Fantasy
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 Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Identity, Self-Knowledge
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Learning
He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Self-improvement, Progress
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Werner Heisenberg German Physicist
- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing German Writer
- Luther Burbank American Botanist
- George Washington Carver American Scientist
- Paul Vixie American Internet Pioneer
- Eliezer Yudkowsky American Scientist
- Arthur Schopenhauer German Philosopher
- Max Planck German Theoretical Physicist
- Friedrich Nietzsche German Philosopher, Scholar
- Carl Zuckmayer German Playwright
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