Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes on Society
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It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
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Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?
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People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.
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Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.
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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.
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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.
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As nations improve, so do their gods.
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If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.
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Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede - not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen.
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We live in a world in which one fool makes many fools but one wise man only a few wise men.
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Why are young widows in mourning so beautiful? (Look into it.)