A Quote by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Quote Topics

Truth Believes Earnest Effort Forward Man Possesses Puts Reach Which Worth

Quote Author

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
German - Critic
January 22, 1729 - February 15, 1781

It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.

Simone Weil

All the worth which the human being possesses all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State... For Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of History in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity...

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

It is not given to man to know the whole Truth. His duty lies in living up to the truth as he sees it, and in doing so, to resort to the purest means, i.e., to non-violence. God alone knows absolute truth. Therefore, I have often said, Truth is God. It follows that man, a finite being, cannot know absolute truth. Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God's attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray.

Mahatma Gandhi

It is through the idealism of youth that man catches sight of truth, and in that idealism he possesses a wealth which he must never exchange for anything else.

Albert Schweitzer

It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.

Blaise Pascal

I just love the fact that a man possesses something that a woman can never understand because we don't have the experiences of it and that a woman possesses something that the man doesn't understand because only she possesses it.

Cameron Diaz

Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God's attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray.

Mahatma Gandhi

A man who possesses genius is insufferable unless he also possesses at least two other things: gratitude and cleanliness.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A man possesses talent; genius possesses the man.

Isaac Stern

The responsibility which rests upon man is proportional to the ability which he possesses and the opportunity which he faces. Perhaps that responsibility is no greater for him than was that of Notharctus or Eohippus or a trilobite, each in his own day, but because of man's unique abilities it is the greatest responsibility that has ever rested upon any of the earth's offspring.

Kirtley F. Mather

It is those books which a man possesses but does not read which constitute the most suspicious evidence against him.

Victor Hugo

That which does not correspond to the truth or to the moral norm possesses, objectively, no right either to existence or to propagation or to action.

Pope Pius XII

Truth possesses within herself a penetrating force, unknown alike to error and falsehood. I say 'truth' and you understand my meaning. For the beautiful words truth and justice need not to be defined in order to be understood in their true sense.