Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

What most clearly characterizes true freedom and its true employment is its misemployment.

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

The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

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

One has to do something new in order to see something new.

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.

A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.

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

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

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard.

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.

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.

I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up.