339 Quotes by Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

He who knows himself properly can very soon learn to know all other men. It is all reflection.

What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...

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?

Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want?

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

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