Soothsayers make a better living in the world than truthsayers.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799), a German physicist and satirist, is best known for his posthumously published notebooks (“Sudelbücher”), collections of aphorisms and observations on human credulity, religion, politics, and the self-deceptions of polite society. The remark about soothsayers and truthsayers fits his recurring theme that audiences often reward pleasing illusions over uncomfortable facts. In late Enlightenment Germany, public appetite for prophecy, superstition, and fashionable “systems” coexisted with the era’s rational ideals; Lichtenberg repeatedly mocked this tension, noting how social and economic incentives can favor the purveyor of consoling predictions over the speaker of inconvenient truths.

The aphorism points to a structural imbalance: telling the truth is frequently costly, while telling people what they want to hear can be profitable. “Soothsayers” stand for anyone who sells reassurance, certainty, or flattering narratives—whether literal fortune-tellers or ideological entrepreneurs—whereas “truthsayers” represent candid observers who risk displeasing patrons, publics, or authorities. Lichtenberg’s sting is economic as well as moral: markets and institutions often pay for entertainment, hope, and confirmation bias more readily than for accuracy. The line also implies a critique of social epistemology: when rewards attach to prediction and persuasion rather than verification, error and fraud can outcompete honest inquiry.