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

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.

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

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

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

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

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

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

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

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

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

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

Georg C. Lichtenberg

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

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