"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."