Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes
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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.
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Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.
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Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
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Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.
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There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
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The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
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Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.
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Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
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We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
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With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.
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A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
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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.
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Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
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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.
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The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
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A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.
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What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.
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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.
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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.
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Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.