“No human being will ever know the truth, for even if they happened to say it by chance, they would not know they had done so.”

— Xenophon

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "No human being will ever know the truth, for even if they happened to say it by chance, they would not know they had do…" by Xenophon?

Xenophon 21

ancient Greek historian and philosopher -430–-354 BC

Related quotes

“There would be no chance to get to know death at all… if it happened only once.”

Sogyal Rinpoche (1947–2019) Tibetan Dzogchen lama of the Nyingma tradition

“No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

"The Student Life" in The Medical News (30 September 1905).

“I had a story tell, a story that needed to be told so that people would know the truth.”

Jessica Lynch (1983) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Congressional testimony (2007)

“This fella from National Geographic says 'no human being has ever seen a live dinosaur'. But hold on a minute; does he know that? Or does he think that? In order to know that, wouldn't he have to know everybody that ever lived?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Dinosaurs and the Bible

“It's so long ago now. Even I don't know the truth. If I had ever known it, I have long forgotten it. All I know is that I took the blame as a good CO should have been and was punished accordingly.”

Joachim Peiper (1915–1976) SS officer

Peiper on the Malmedy massacre, excerpted from A Traveler's Guide to the Battle for the German Frontier by Charles Whiting.

“I just know that something good is going to happen.
I don't know when,
But just saying it could even make it happen.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985)

“If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "No" to war. For one does not create human society on mounds of corpses.”

Louis Lecoin (1888–1971) French militant anarcho-pacifist

As quoted in Seeds of Peace : A Catalogue of Quotations (1986) edited by Jeanne Larson and Madge Micheels-Cyrus

“Sometimes you say things in songs even if there's a small chance of them being true. And sometimes you say things that have nothing to do with the truth of what you want to say and sometimes you say things that everyone knows to be true. Then again, at the same time, you're thinking that the only truth on earth is that there is no truth on it. Whatever you are saying, you're saying in a ricky-tick way. There's never time to reflect. You stitched and pressed and packed and drove, is what you did.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: Chronicles: Vol. One (2004), p. 220

“Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn't hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

“Nothing should be done to impede people from teaching and doing their research even if at that very moment it was being used to massacre and destroy. […] the radical students and I wanted to keep the labs on campus, on the principle that what is going to be going on anyway ought to be open and above board, so that people would know what is happening and act accordingly.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

referring to 1969 https://web.archive.org/web/20031106175309/http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/chomsky/chomsky/4/11.html
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent, 1992

“No human being will ever know the truth, for even if they happened to say it by chance, they would not know they had done so.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Xenophon 21

Related quotes

Related topics