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Necessity
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If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Neutrality
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Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Obscurity
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Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Opinion
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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...
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Man is a gregarious animal and much more so in his mind than in his body. A golden rule; judge men not by their opinions but by what their opinions have made of them.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Oppression
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A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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People
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In each of us there is a little of all of us.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Perfection
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Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Philosophy
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We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Politics
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We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Praise
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A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Prejudice
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Progress
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He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Propaganda
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The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Prophecy
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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.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Purpose
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The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Reading
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There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Reason
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Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Books by and about G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg