“Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.”

— Romain Rolland

Source: Above the Battle

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it." by Romain Rolland?

Romain Rolland 43

French author 1866–1944

Related quotes

“To accept reason is impossible if you don’t already possess it.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Raison annehmen kann niemand, der nicht schon welche hat.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 23.

“The seeking for truth is better than its loveless possession.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 182

“Who is dying for whom? You keep claiming that someone else already died for your sins, then why are you going to die again?”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The truth can be spoken only by someone who is already at home in it; not by someone who still lives in untruthfulness, and does no more than reach out towards it from within untruthfulness.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 41e

“It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Who claims Truth, Truth abandons.”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

Source: Mason & Dixon (1997), Ch. 35
Context: Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power, — who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.