G. C. Lichtenberg Quotes (76 Quotes)

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.

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.

Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.

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.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of mankind which we apparently can hardly attain without going through the invigorating hibernation of a new barbarism.

People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the secret desires, of all enlightened Europeans are deflected to the west, like our magnetic needles.

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians.

Probably no invention came more easily to man than Heaven.

The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.

If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

When a book and a head collide, and there is a hollow sound, is it always in the book.

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop. . .

It may not be natural for man to walk on two legs, but it was a noble invention.

Nothing contributes more to a person's peace of mind than having no opinions at all.

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. . .

Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Now that education is so easy, men are drilled for greatness, just as dogs are trained to retrieve. In this way we've discovered a new sort of genius, those great at being drilled. These are the people who are mainly spoiling the market.

If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

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.

Love is blind, but marriage restores its sight.

If it were true what in the end would be gained Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

The writer who can't at times throw away a thought about which another would have written dissertations, unworried whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.

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

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

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.

So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.

The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.

There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.

People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.

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

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.

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

With the majority of people unbelief in one thing is founded on the blind belief in another.

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

Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence Two times two is four.

The grave is still the best shelter against the storms of destiny.

What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages.

If people are taught how to think and not always what to think, a false concept will be guarded against.

Get your mind accustomed to doubting and your heart to being conciliatory.

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump. . .

Books are a mirror if an ass peers into them, you can't expect an apostle to look out.