Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

• God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in God

  Tags in Philosophers, Bible

• 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.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Special

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

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Ourselves

• There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Thinking

• It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Wisdom

  Tags in Human

• Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Weakness

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Things

• If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Character, Man

• 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.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Actual, Aristocracy

• If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Hunger

• Never undertake anything for which you wouldn’t have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Courage, Blessing, Heaven

• 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 in Uncategorized

  Tags in Murderers, Question

• 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 in Uncategorized

  Tags in Model, Pleasures, Imagination

• Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mind, Peace, Opinion

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

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Opinion, Contribution

• The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human, Tendency

• 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 in Work

  Tags in Noble, Simplicity

• The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Truth

  Tags in Dangerous

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Talent, Century

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

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writer

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (95)

Birth:	1st July, 1742
Death:	24th February, 1799
Nationality:	German
Profession:	Satirist, Scientist

About

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a German scientist, satirist, and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany. Today, he is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called Sudelbücher, a description modeled on the English bookkeeping term "scrapbooks", and for his discovery of the strange tree-like patterns now called Lichtenberg figures.

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