If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones.
~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
When they have discovered truth in nature they fling it into a book, where it is even worse hands.
...if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.
The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.
What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.
Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.
Many are less fortunate than you’ may not be a roof to live under, but it will serve to retire beneath in the event of a shower.
Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?
Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.
If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.
I would give something to know for precisely whom the deeds were really done, of which it is publicly stated they were done 'for the Fatherland'.
I cannot say whether things will get better if we change, what I can say is that they must change if they are to get better.
Nothing is more conductive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
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.
A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
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.
The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.
Don't judge a man by his opinions, but what his opinions have made of him.
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.
Just as we outgrow a pair of trousers we outgrow acquaintances libraries principles etc. at times before they're worn out and times-and this is the worst of all-before we have new ones.
It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.
God creates the animals man creates himself.
