Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.”

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

“To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.”

“To be astonished at everything is the first step of the mind towards discovery.”

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

“Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for the contrary, he has managed to retain his conviction of superiority.”

“The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.”

“If a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always be the book?”

“He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage -- he won't encounter many rivals.”

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

“Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.”

“A book is a mirror: if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.”

“Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that two and two are four.”

“What you have been obliged to discover by yourself leaves a path in your mind which you can use again when the need arises.”

“Don't judge a man by his opinions, but by what his opinions have made of him.”

“The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced many great things.”

“Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers, we outgrow opinions, and there is no more shame in admitting the latter than in buying a larger pair of trousers.”