Georg C. Lichtenberg

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

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. ”

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. ”

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery. ”

When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so. ”

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted. ”

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

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

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