57 Notable Quotes By Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him.
I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is that they must change if they are to get better.
The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.
Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?
Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.
I forget most of what I read, just as I do most of what I have eaten, but I know that both contribute no less to the conservation of my mind and my body on that account.
One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.
Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind.
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
There is no mistaking a good book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called "Damn It".
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.
You believe I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.
You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
Some people 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 14.
I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.
A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.
Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism
To make clever people believe we are what we are not is in most instances harder than really to become what we want to seem to be.
