Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

Perhaps pure reason without heart would never have thought of God.

We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.

If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever. Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later.

Ask yourself always: how can this be done better?

In every man there is something of all men.

It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

Most men of education are more superstitious than they admit - nay, than they think.

The great trick of regarding small departures from the truth as the truth itself - on which is founded the entire integral calculus - is also the basis of our witty speculations, where the whole thing would often collapse if we considered the departures with philosophical rigour.

Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

We now possess four principles of morality: 1) a philosophical: do good for its own sake, out of respect for the law; 2) a religious: do good because it is God's will, out of love of God; 3) a human: do good because it will promote your happiness, out of self-love; 4) a political: do good because it will promote the welfare of the society of which you are a part, out of love of society having regard to yourself. But is this not all one single principle, only viewed from different sides?

The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.

There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where.

Barbaric accuracy - whimpering humility.

A donkey appears to me like a horse translated into Dutch.

There are many who believe that 'Marriage is not a word - it is a sentence!' Whether you are indeed 'married' or if you are 'single', I am sure that funny quotes on weddings and marriages always tend to put a wicked smile to the face. It is often said that 'People who are married are often desperate to get out of it and people who are single can't wait to get in!'

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.

Pain warns us not to exert our limbs to the point of breaking them. How much knowledge would we not need to recognize this by the exercise of mere reason.

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.