Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a German-language physicist, mathematician, writer, philosopher, and astronomer, born in 1742 in Ober-Ramstadt.
He was educated at the University of Göttingen and worked as a university teacher. A citizen of both the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt and the Holy Roman Empire, he has also been described as a French moralist, reflecting a range of intellectual concerns that extended well beyond any single discipline. He died on February 24, 1799, in Göttingen.
During his lifetime, Lichtenberg received the distinction of Fellow of the Royal Society. He wrote in German, and his output covered physics, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, making him a figure who moved across several fields of inquiry.
He kept a series of notebooks he called Sudelbücher, and these were published only after his death. That body of posthumously published writing remains what he is most concretely remembered for today.
Quotes by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's insights on:
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage— he won't encounter many rivals.
I can't say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is that they must change if they are to get better.
Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
Hour-glasses remind us, not only of how time flies, but at the same time of the dust into which we shall one day decay.
The most accomplished monkey cannot draw a monkey, this only man can do; just as it is also only man who regards his ability to do this as a distinct merit.
Everyone has a moral backside, which he won't show unless he has to, keeping it covered as long as possible with the pants of respectability.
Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.
