Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes (1742-1799)

“Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.”

“Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.”

“It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.”

“Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.”

“If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.”

“We do not think good metaphors are anything very important, but I think that a good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.”

“We may use Lichtenberg’s writings as the most wonderful dowsing rod: wherever he makes a joke, there a problem lies hidden.”

“God created man in His own image, and in requital man created God in his, says Lichtenberg, and it is true that a man’s conception of God is essentially determined by the kind of man he is. So it is that I conceive of God as one who approves in a calculated vigilance, I believe that he approves of intrigues, and what I have read in the sacred books of the Old Testament is not of a sort to dishearten me. The Old Testament furnishes examples abundantly of a shrewdness which is nevertheless well pleasing to God, and that at a later period Christ said to His disciples, “These things I said not unto you from the beginning … I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now” – so here is a teleological suspension of the ethical rule of telling the whole truth.”

“He is not a household name. He is something rarer: a name savored by household names. Goethe, who corresponded with Lichtenberg, admired him greatly (even though Lichtenberg disputed his theory of color).”

“Lichtenberg digs deeper than anyone... but he does not come up again. Only he hears him who digs deep himself.”