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Action(s)
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The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Adversity
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Age
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One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Angels
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If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Apathy
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If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Aristocracy
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Assumptions
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Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Astronomy
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Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Authors & Writing
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As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Belief
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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With the majority of people unbelief in one thing is founded on the blind belief in another.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Books
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If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can not expect an apostle to peer out.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Brevity
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It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar -- that I call an achievement.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Change
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Character
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A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Christianity
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There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Books by and about G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg