Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799)
German scientist, satirist and philosopher.
Perhaps he was even more remarkable as a psychologist than as a physicist.
Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.
If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.
Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.
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.
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.
As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.
If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
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.
He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.
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.
First we have to believe, and then we believe.
The "second sight" possessed by the Highlanders in Scotland is actually a foreknowledge of future events. I believe they possess this gift because they don't wear trousers... That is also why in all countries women are more prone to utter prophecies.
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.
What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?
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.
Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me.