Georg C. Lichtenberg the Scientist, biography, facts and quotes

"What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"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"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"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"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"Sickness is mankind's greatest defect"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"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"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"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"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"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"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"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"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"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"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"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"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"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"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"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"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

"Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much"

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Occup.	Scientist
From	Germany
Born	July 1, 1742
Died	February 24, 1799
Aged	56 years

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