"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)."

"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."

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

"Perhaps he was even more remarkable as a psychologist than as a physicist."

"I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested."

"Bei den meisten Menschen gründet sich der unglaube in einer Sache auf blinden Glauben in einer anderen."

"He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp."

"Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful."

"What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment."

"Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it."

"Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven."

"The "second sight" possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers... That is also why in all countries women are more prone to utter prophecies."

"Those who have racked their brains to discover new proofs have perhaps been induced to do so by a compulsion they could not quite explain to themselves. Instead of giving us their new proofs they should have explained to us the motivation that constrained them to search for them."

"If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind."

"There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist."

"There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly."

"The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen."

"First we have to believe, and then we believe."

"So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians."

"One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind."

"It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists."

"If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly."

"To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still."

"He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery."

"Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle."

"Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming."

"It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories."

"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."

"The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle."

"Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions."

"Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older."

"One has to do something new in order to see something new."

"Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will."

"It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both in him."

"It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into."

"The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority."

"One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use."

"Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates."

"The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter."

"A great speech is easy to learn by heart and a great poem even easier. How hard it would be to memorize as many words linked together senselessly, or a speech in a foreign tongue! Sense and understanding thus come to the aid of memory. Sense is order and order is in the last resort conformity with our nature. When we speak rationally we are only speaking in accordance with the nature of our being. That is why we devise genera and species in the case of plants and animals. The hypotheses we make belong here too: we are obliged to have them because otherwise we would unable to retain things... The question is, however, whether everything is legible to us. Certainly experiment and reflection enable us to introduce a significance into what is not legible, either to us or at all: thus we see faces or landscapes in the sand, though they are certainly not there. The introducion of symmetries belongs here too, silhouettes in inkblots, etc. Likewise the gradation we establish in the order of creatures: all this is not in the things but in us. In general we cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing."

"A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species."

"Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoitre the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy."

"With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet."

"Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much."

"He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals."

"The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted."

"We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest."

"The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it."

"The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things."

"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery."