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About this quote

What does it mean?
Lichtenberg notes that imagined illness in the body parallels imagined sanity in the mind, questioning objective states of health.
In plain terms
Many people think they are sick or sane when they might not be.
What can you take from it?
Self-perception often mismatches reality.

Where it applies

  • medical consultation
  • mental health
  • self-diagnosis

Putting it to work

  • seek professional evaluation

Questions to consider

  • Are you as sane as you think?
  • Is health objective?

Another view

Subjective experience is still valid.

More from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

  1. As nations improve, so do their gods.

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  2. Do not have too artificial an idea of man but judge him naturally. Don't consider him too good or too bad. It is a golden rule that one should not judge people…

    Permalink to quote #123
  3. I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

    Permalink to quote #120

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