All Quotes

"It is not only the most delightful and scientific, but the most moral of amusements."

"It is eminently and emphatically the philosopher's game."

"If I return some people's greetings, I do so only to give them their greeting back."

"I trim my opponents to fit my arrows."

"Many desire to kill me, and many wish to spend an hour chatting with me. The law protects me from the former."

"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."

"Everyone is stopped and waiting, maitre d's, hansom cab drivers and governments. Everyone's waiting for the end. Let's hope the apocalypse is pleasant, Your Highness."

"There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way."

"What is the Ninth Symphony compared to a Tin Pan Alley hit played on a hurdy-gurdy and a memory?"

"Der Fortschritt feiert Pyrrhussiege über die Natur."

"Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace."

"Psychoanalysis is that mental illness which claims to be its own cure. (Vienna, 1972)"

"Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence."

"Progress … has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools."

"The tyranny of necessity grants its slaves three kinds of freedom: opinion free from intellect, entertainment free from art, and orgies free from love."

"We are sacrificing ourselves for our ready-made goods; we are consumers and live in such a way that the means may consume the end."

"An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half."

"Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world."

"The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life."

"My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious."

"War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that the enemy too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost."

"Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis."

"I hear noises which others don't hear and which disturb for me the music of the spheres, which others don't hear either."

"Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them."

"It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas."

"Moral responsibility is what is lacking in a man when he demands it of a woman."

"The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he."

"I have often been asked to be fair and view a matter from all sides. I did so, hoping something might improve if I viewed all sides of it. But the result was the same. So I went back to viewing things only from one side, which saves me a lot of work and disappointment. For it is comforting to regard something as bad and be able use one's prejudice as an excuse."

"I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear."

"I no longer have collaborators. I used to be envious of them. They repel those readers whom I want to lose myself."

"What is my love? That I amalgamate the bad features of a woman into a good picture. And my hatred? That I see the bad features in the picture of a bad man."

"When I read, it is not acted literature; but what I write is written acting."

"Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or race hatred. To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all. No petty prejudices!"

"I would have stage-fright if I had to speak with every one of the people before whom I speak."

"I like to hold a monologue with women. But a dialogue with myself is more stimulating."

"Since the law prohibits the keeping of wild animals and I get no enjoyment from pets, I prefer to remain unmarried."

"Many things I am experiencing I already remember."

"Only he is an artist who can make a riddle out of a solution."

"Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients."

"Nestroy's words ought to apply to an artist and an idea: "I have made a prisoner, and he won't let go of me!""

"Most writers have no other quality than the reader: taste. But the latter has the better taste, because he does not write - and the best if he does not read."

"Hate must make a person productive; otherwise one might as well love."

"Sound opinions are valueless. What matters is who holds them."

"It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean."

"The real truths are those that can be invented."

"One shouldn't learn more than what one absolutely needs against life."

"Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves."

"Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden."