339 Quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.

He marvelled at the fact that the cats had two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes were.

I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.

The more experiences and experiments accumulate in the exploration of nature, the more precarious the theories become. But it is not always good to discard them immediately on this account. For every hypothesis which once was sound was useful for thinking of previous phenomena in the proper interrelations and for keeping them in context. We ought to set down contradictory experiences separately, until enough have accumulated to make building a new structure worthwhile.

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.

People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.

One can live in this world on soothsaying but not on truth saying.

First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.

The drive to propagate our race has also propagated a lot of other things