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Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

Georg C. Lichtenberg
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The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow acquaintances, libraries, principles, etc., at times before they're worn out and times - and this is the worst of all - before we have new ones.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Men still have to be governed by deception.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficult, elephants and poodles find many things obscure.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?
Georg C. Lichtenberg
To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.
Georg C. Lichtenberg