Top 335 Quotes & Sayings by Georg C. Lichtenberg - Page 3

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

It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.

A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as so much as existing. Away with it!

The lower classes of men, though they do not think it worthwhile to record what they perceive, nevertheless perceive everything that is worth noting; the difference between them and a man of learning often consists in nothing more than the latter's facility for expression.

Those who never have time do least

I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up.

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.

The more experiences and experiments accumulate in the exploration of nature, the more precarious the theories become. But it is not always good to discard them immediately on this account. For every hypothesis which once was sound was useful for thinking of previous phenomena in the proper interrelations and for keeping them in context. We ought to set down contradictory experiences separately, until enough have accumulated to make building a new structure worthwhile.

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

Everyone is perfectly willing to learn from unpleasant experience - if only the damage of the first lesson could be repaired.

What we are able to judge with feeling is very little; the rest is all prejudice and complaisance.

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

People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.

They do not think, therefore they are not.

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.

I am grateful that I am not as judgmental as all those censorious, self-righteous people around me. In each of us there is a little of all of us.

You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying.

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

It thunders, howls, roars, hisses, whistles, blusters, hums, growls, rumbles, squeaks, groans, sings, crackles, cracks, rattles, flickers, clicks, snarls, tumbles, whimpers, whines, rustles, murmurs, crashes, clucks, to gurgle, tinkles, blows, snores, claps, to lisp, to cough, it boils, to scream, to weep, to sob, to croak, to stutter, to lisp, to coo, to breathe, to clash, to bleat, to neigh, to grumble, to scrape, to bubble. These words, and others like them, which express sounds are more than mere symbols: they are a kind of hieroglyphics for the ear.

He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.

The world is a body common to all men, changes to it bring about a change in the souls of all men who are turned towards that part of it at that moment.

One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

The natural scientists of the previous age knew less than we do and believed they were very close to the goal: we have taken very great steps in its direction and now discover we are still very far away from it. With the most rational philosophers an increase in their knowledge is always attended by an increased conviction of their ignorance.

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

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.

Nowadays beautiful women are counted among the talents of their husbands.

A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how what is left would behave: for example, where would we be if iron were absent from the world: this is an old example.

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

In every man there is something of all men.

Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them.

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

Ambition and suspicion always go together.

No despotism is so formidable as that of a religion or a scientific system.

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.

It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.

One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them.

A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.

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

Deliberate virtue is never worth much: The virtue of feeling or habit is the thing.

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

Above all things expand the frontiers of science: without this the rest counts for nothing.

The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the philosophy itself. When we ask the time, we don't want to know how watches are made.

Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.

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?

Never undertake anything unless you have the heart to ask Heaven's blessing on your undertaking.

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

We judge nothing so hastily as character, and yet there is nothing over which we should be more cautious.... I have always found that the so-called bad people improve on closer acquaintance, while the good fall off.

God: personified incomprehensibility.

There are people who can believe anything they wish. What lucky creatures!

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.

I have often noticed that when people come to understand a mathematical proposition in some other way than that of the ordinary demonstration, they promptly say, "Oh, I see. That's how it must be." This is a sign that they explain it to themselves from within their own system.

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse.

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!'

Probably no invention came more easily to man than heaven.

Is it not strange that mankind should so willingly battle for religion and so unwillingly live according to its precepts?

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.

Every condition of the soul has its own sign and expression...So you will see how hard it is to seem original without being so.

Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.