11 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes on Society

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg quotes on society

1. It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.

4. 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?

14. 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.

71. 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.

85. 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.

115. 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.

121. As nations improve, so do their gods.

131. If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

148. 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.

160. We live in a world in which one fool makes many fools but one wise man only a few wise men.

163. Why are young widows in mourning so beautiful? (Look into it.)