Georg C. Lichtenberg
49 quotations
If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.
Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.
Ideas too are a life and a world.
To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.
Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.
The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
In each of us there is a little of all of us.
I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.
A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.
The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.