Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

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.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

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.

Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.

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.

Man is a gregarious animal and much more so in his mind than in his body. A golden rule; judge men not by their opinions but by what their opinions have made of them.

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

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...

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

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

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

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

Ideas too are a life and a world.

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.

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

It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

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.

A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.

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

So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.

A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

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.

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms.

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.