Top 75 Quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.

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.

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

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.

Men still have to be governed by deception.

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.