QuotesTemple
The Power of Satire
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a German satirist and physicist. He is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called 'waste books', and for his discovery of the Lichtenberg figure.
Satirist, Physicist | German
Born: 1742-07-01 in Ober-Ramstadt, Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt, Holy Roman Empire
Died: February 24, 1799 in Göttingen, Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg
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
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
Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.
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
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
God created man in His own image, says the Bible philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.
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
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
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
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
One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.
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
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
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
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
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
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
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
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