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Humanity
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That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Humor
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If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Idealism
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If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Ideas
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Ideas too are a life and a world.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Identity
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Ignorance & Stupidity
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Imitation
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To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Innovation
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We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Intelligence
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The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Journalism
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The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Learning
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Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Liberalism
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Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Libraries
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It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Loyalty
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Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was -- nobody any longer wanted to be that.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Mankind, Man
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The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Mathematics
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So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Men & Women
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Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Mistakes
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To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Morals
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown...
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Murder
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Nature
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We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Books by and about G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg