One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
Georg C. 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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

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.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

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