Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Quotes about people

“There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

E 59
Variant translation: There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible...
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)
Context: There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. … It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth … into a liar — that I call an achievement.

People

“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.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

L 16
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)

God , People

“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.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

B 41
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

People , Lie , Winter

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

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

J 77
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)

People , Truth

“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.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

J 85
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)

People , Way , Behavior

“It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

A 11
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook A (1765-1770)

God , People , Idea

“If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

C 54
Variant translation: If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook C (1772-1773)

Hunger , People

“There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

G 29
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)

People , Thinking , Reading

“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 Christoph Lichtenberg

C 38
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook C (1772-1773)

People , Pleasure , Imagination , Drawing

“There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

D 70
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook D (1773-1775)