Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) was a German philosopher, physicist, and an important figure in the German Enlightenment. A satirist and writer of aphorisms, he is best known, apart from an experiment in xerographic electricity, for his derision of metaphysical and romantic extravagances.
Born in Ober-Ramstadt, near Darmstadt, State of Hesse, Lichtenberg was crippled by an accident in childhood. He was the 17th child of a Protestant pastor, who trained him in mathematics and the natural sciences. In 1763, Georg entered Göttingen University, where he taught until his death.
Lichtenberg researched geophysics, volcanology, meteorology, chemistry, astronomy, and mathematics. His most important studies were his experimentations into physics. Specifically, he constructed a massive electrophorus in 1777 and discovered the central principle of modern xerographic copying; the images that he reproduced are still termed “Lichtenberg figures.”
A satirist and humorist, Lichtenberg was one of the sharpest intellectuals and prose writers of the eighteenth century. Although Lichtenberg wrote no major creative works, he is well known for his brilliant satire on the Swiss philosopher Johann Kaspar Lavater’s Physiognomische Fragmente, appearing under the title Über Physiognomik, wider die Physiognomen (1778.)
Throughout his adult life, Lichtenberg kept notebooks he called Sudelbücher (“waste books.”) In them, he recorded quotations, sketched, and made brief observations on a variety of subjects from science to philosophy. First published posthumously in 1800–06, they became his best-known work and built his repute as an aphorist. Selections from the Sudelbücher were published in English as The Waste Books (2000.)
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The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Cunning, Intelligence
A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Reading, Books
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Character, Jokes
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: Fools
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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Praise, Applause
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
With most people, unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Beliefs, Belief
Too much is unwholesome.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Gratitude, Appreciation, Blessings
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 Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Nature
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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Purpose, Intentions
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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Aging, Age
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Books, Reading, Thinking, Literature
The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Reading, Literature, Books
There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Science
A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Art, Literature, Books
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
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Topics: Time, Productivity, Time Management
Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
—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
Topics: Science
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