Quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

About Georg C. Lichtenberg:

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called Sudelbücher, a description modelled on the English bookkeeping term "scrapbooks", and for his discovery of the strange tree-like patterns now called Lichtenberg figures.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

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

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

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

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Author Bio

  • NameGeorg C. Lichtenberg
  • DescriptionGerman scientist, satirist
  • BornJuly 1, 1742
  • DiedFebruary 24, 1799
  • CountryGermany
  • ProfessionPhysicist; Astronomer; Writer; Scientist
  • AwardsFellow Of The Royal Society