lichtenberg Quotes

“We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.”

“I cannot say whether things will get better if we change what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.”

“God created man in His own image, says the Bible philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.”

“Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.”

“What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.”

“What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?”

“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.”