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Georg C. Lichtenberg Quotes


One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.

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.

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.

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.

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

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.

To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.