Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

• 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

• Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they’re worn out and times – and this is the worst of all – before we have new ones.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ourselves, Acquaintance, Libraries

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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 Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Believe In Yourself

• 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

• 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 Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in Self, Stuff

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

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Earnest, Flattery

• He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage – he won’t encounter many rivals.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Person, Advantage

• 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

• 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 Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Decorum, Showing

• Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Erudition

• Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.

  Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Doubt, Vigilance

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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