Georg C. Lichtenberg Thinking Quotations

Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

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.

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

It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.

The lower classes of men, though they do not think it worthwhile to record what they perceive, nevertheless perceive everything that is worth noting; the difference between them and a man of learning often consists in nothing more than the latter's facility for expression.

A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand.

Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking.

They do not think, therefore they are not.

I have never yet met anyone who did not think it was an agreeable sensation to cut tinfoil with scissors.

Nothing puts a greater obstacle in the way of the progress of knowledge than thinking that one knows what one does not yet know.

The more experiences and experiments accumulate in the exploration of nature, the more precarious the theories become. But it is not always good to discard them immediately on this account. For every hypothesis which once was sound was useful for thinking of previous phenomena in the proper interrelations and for keeping them in context. We ought to set down contradictory experiences separately, until enough have accumulated to make building a new structure worthwhile.

The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done.

What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...

A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as so much as existing. Away with it!

Some people feel with their heads and think with their hearts.

Most men of education are more superstitious than they admit - nay, than they think.

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.

Some people read only because they are too lazy to think.