Georg C. Lichtenberg
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenbergwas a German scientist, satirist, and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany. Today, he is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called Sudelbücher, a description modelled on the English bookkeeping term "scrapbooks", and for his discovery of the strange tree-like electrical discharge patterns now called Lichtenberg figures...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth1 July 1742
CountryGermany
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.
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.
To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.
A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
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.
We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.
To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.