Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes

The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.

Talent is very dangerous. It alienates people.

We [Germans] are morally and intellectually superior to all men.

I proved it. I'm the best - I proved it.

I try to be as humble as possible, but I'm just on another level. That's all there is to it.

Man,--the aristocrat amongst the animals.

Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is the gravity of our sinful nature, not grace.

Man would not be the finest creature in the world if he were not too fine for it.

There's nobody bigger or better at the military than I am.

Arrogance frowns; pride smiles.

Pride thyself on what virtue thou hast, and not on thy parentage.

That's the trouble with you young people. You think because you ain't been here long, you know everything. In my life I already forgot more than you ever know.

The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.

Ain't got no comparison and I ain't being arrogant.

People who parade their holiness are operating dangerously close to the sin of pride.

Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others.

The look of success, when it is worn a certain way, would infuriate a jackass.

I do all the work so it's only right that I should get the most money. Plus I am the most handsome.

... perhaps there is no conceit so arrogant as the conceit which follows a conviction of emancipation.

Pride thinks it's own happiness shines the brighter by comparing it with the misfortunes of others.

Some men who know that they are great are so very haughty withal and insufferable that their acquaintance discover their greatness only by the tax of humility which they are obliged to pay as the price of their friendship.

The real objection to the great majority of cats is their insufferable air of superiority.

I thought about how odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no animal equivalent were smoking, body-building and writing. That's not much, considering how special we seem to think we are.

I always thought I was the finest thing around.

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.