Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes - Page 3

Men still have to be governed by deception.

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

Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence "Two times two is four."

Those who never have time do least

Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.

Everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before.

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

A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.

The book which most deserved to be banned would be a catalog of banned books.

Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

Some people feel with their heads and think with their hearts.

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.

In the world we live in, one fool makes many fools, but one sage only a few sages.

A donkey appears to me like a horse translated into Dutch.

I forget the greater part of what I read, but all the same it nourishes my mind.

Non cogitant, ergo non sunt.

Probably no invention came more easily to man than heaven.

We now possess four principles of morality: 1) a philosophical: do good for its own sake, out of respect for the law; 2) a religious: do good because it is God's will, out of love of God; 3) a human: do good because it will promote your happiness, out of self-love; 4) a political: do good because it will promote the welfare of the society of which you are a part, out of love of society having regard to yourself. But is this not all one single principle, only viewed from different sides?

It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal.

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?

A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up.