To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.

This remark is characteristic of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s aphoristic writing in his private “waste books” (Sudelbücher), notebooks in which he jotted observations on psychology, manners, and intellectual life rather than composing for publication. In that milieu—late Enlightenment Germany, with strong pressures of taste, fashion, and literary schools—Lichtenberg repeatedly skewers the desire to appear original. The thought targets a common posture among writers and thinkers: defining oneself by contrariness to prevailing opinion. Lichtenberg suggests that even deliberate opposition can remain tethered to what it rejects, because it still takes the other as its model and point of reference.

Lichtenberg’s remark targets a subtle kind of dependence: defining oneself “against” another person, fashion, or authority can still leave one governed by it. If your choices are primarily reactions—doing the opposite simply because someone else does X—then the other remains the reference point, and your supposed independence is a mirror-image conformity. The line fits Lichtenberg’s broader satirical interest in self-deception and the hidden motives behind moral posturing. It suggests that genuine originality requires acting from one’s own reasons and judgment, not from contrarian reflex. The insight applies to politics, taste, and personal identity alike: opposition can be as imitative as agreement.