Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

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

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Regard, Original, Minds

• Virtue by premeditation isn’t worth much.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Virtue, Premeditation

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

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Official, Position

• We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Wisdom

  Tags in Stupid

• What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer’s own weaknesses reflected back from others.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Knowledge

  Tags in Human Nature

• 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 Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Conclusions

• 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 Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Effort

  Tags in Myself, Acknowledge, Embarrassment

• 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 in Uncategorized

  Tags in Houses, Cards

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

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Disbelief

• With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self, Successfully, Excommunication

• With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Commentator, Prophecies

• Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Performance, Spirit, Talent

• It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one’s own advantage and to that of one’s craft that a large part of genius consists.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Vicissitudes

• 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 Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Idea, Nobility

• Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Dreams

• Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in God

  Tags in Passions

• Man loves company – even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Man, Company

• A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Soldiers, Argument

• Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Judgement, Obscure

• Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Creation

  Tags in Masterpiece

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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