Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers.

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

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.

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

It is a great shame; most of our words are misused tools / which often still smell of the mud in which previous owners / desecrated them.

One should never trust a person who, while assuring you of something, puts his hands on his heart.

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.

The "second sight" possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers.

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

The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books.

It is astonishing how much the word infinitely is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, etc. The concept must have something pleasing about it, or its misuse could not have become so general.

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.

The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.

A good part of the fame of most celebrated men is due to the shortsightedness of their admirers

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done.

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.

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

He marvelled at the fact that the cats had two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes were.

Nothing puts a greater obstacle in the way of the progress of knowledge than thinking that one knows what one does not yet know.

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.

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.

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.

If an angel were to tell us about his philosophy, I believe many of his statements might well sound like '2 x 2= 13'.

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.

I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.

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.

In each of us there is a little of all of us.

First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.

Some people feel with their heads and think with their hearts.

The highest point to which a weak but experienced mind can rise is detecting the weakness of better men.

What you have been obliged to discover by yourself leaves a path in your mind which you can use again when the need arises.

It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.

How did mankind ever come by the idea of liberty? What a grand thought it was!

After all, is our idea of God anything more than personified incomprehensibility?

How might letters be most efficiently copied so that the blind might read them with their fingers?

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

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.

Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.

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

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

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.