Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

There is no mistaking a good book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

The man was such an intellectual he was of almost no use.

Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind.

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

You believe I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.

It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.

A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to peer out.

Diogenes, filthily attired, paced across the splendid carpets in Plato's dwelling. Thus, said he, do I trample on the pride of Plato. Yes, Plato replied, but only with another kind of pride.

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

You can make a good living from soothsaying but not from truthsaying

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

"If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called "Damn It"."

I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.

Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.

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