Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

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

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.

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

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

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

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

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

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.

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

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

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

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

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.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.