Georg C. Lichtenberg
  • What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

  • 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.

  • One must judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made of them.

  • 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.

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