If God held all truth in his right hand and in his left the everlasting striving after truth, with the risk that I should always and everlastingly be mistaken, and said to me ‘Choose!’ in humility I would pick the left hand and say, ‘Father grant me that: Absolute truth is for thee alone.’
— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Eine Duplik (1778) in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Paul Rilla (Berlin: Aufbau, 1954-8), vol.8, pp.505ff.
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