Guess quote

Georg C. Lichtenberg [1742-1799] German

Rank: 101
Scientist

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a German scientist, satirist, and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany.

Wisdom, Alone, Brainy, Change, Courage, Dreams, History, Imagination, Intelligence, Men, Nature, Peace

Quote	Tags	Rank
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.	Change	101
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.	Intelligence	102
We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.	Alone, Nature	103
Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.		104
Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.	Dreams	105
Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.		106
The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.		107
Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times - and this is the worst of all - before we have new ones.		108
Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.		109
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.	Peace	110
If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.		111
It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.	Wisdom	112
God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.		113
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.	Imagination	114
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.		115
To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.		116
Men still have to be governed by deception.		117
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.		118
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.		119
The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.		120
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.	History	121
Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.		122
We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.		123
The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.		124
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.	Brainy	125
Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.	Courage	126
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.		201
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.		202
Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.		203
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.		204
To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.		205
One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.	Men	206
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?		207
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.		208
With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.		209
It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.		210
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.		211
Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.		212
When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.		213
The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.		214
Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.		215
Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.		216
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.		217
Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.		218
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.		219
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.		220
We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.	Wisdom	221
The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.		222
If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.		223
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.		224
There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.		225
To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.		226
Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.		301
Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.		302
The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.		303
That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.		304
We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.		305
Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.		306
What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.		307
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.		308
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.		309
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.		310
To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.		311
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.		312
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.		313
He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.		314
A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.		315
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.		316
Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.		317
I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.		318
With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.		319
With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.		320
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.		321
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.		322
If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.		323

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