Georg C. Lichtenberg

“I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.”

“What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?”

“We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.”

“Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.”

“Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.”

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

“Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.”

“God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.”

“Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.”

“Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.”

“He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.”

“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.”

“The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.”

“Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.”

“Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.”

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

“To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.”

“With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.”

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

“We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.”