Science Quote by Georg C. Lichtenberg

Habit, in Lichtenberg's hands, stops being a cozy self-help noun and turns into a physics problem with a conscience. Calling it "moral friction" is a sly splice: he borrows the language of mechanics to describe how ethics actually operates in the brain. Friction is not evil; it's what makes walking possible. But it's also what wears surfaces down and turns motion into heat. That double meaning is the point. Habit stabilizes us by giving the mind traction on the world, yet it also quietly taxes our freedom, making change feel like pushing a heavy object across the floor.

The subtext is a warning aimed at the Enlightenment fantasy of a mind that can simply choose to be rational. Lichtenberg, a scientist with a satirist's eye, suggests the mind doesn't "glide" over reality on pure reason; it sticks. Repetition creates attachment, and attachment creates a kind of moral inertia. Once you have practiced a belief, a prejudice, a routine kindness, or a petty cruelty often enough, it gains grip. You don't merely hold it; it holds you.

Context matters: Lichtenberg wrote in the late 18th century, when empiricism and new sciences were recasting human nature in material terms. His metaphor implies that character is engineered as much as it is willed. The intent isn't to romanticize discipline; it's to puncture complacency. If you want to "free" yourself, you can't just think differently. You have to change the surfaces that rub: environments, repetitions, the small rituals that turn thoughts into grooves.