“Throughout his life Einstein was a man of the book, to a much higher degree than other scientists. The remarkably diverse collection of volumes in his library grew constantly. If we look only at the German-language books published before 1910 that survived Einstein’s Princeton household, the list includes much of the cannon of the time: Boltzmann, Buchner, Friedrich Hebbel, the works of Heine in two editions, Helmholtz, von Humboldt, the many books of Kant, Gotthold Lessing, Mach, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer. But what looms largest are the collected works of Johann von Goethe in a thirty-six volume edition and another of twelve volumes, plus two volumes on his Optics, the exchange of letters between Goethe and Schiller, and a separate volume of Faust.”

— Gerald Holton (2008), commentary (Ѻ) on Einstein’s personal library

“The value of a man does not depend on the truth he possesses or believes he possesses, but on the sincere labor he has bestowed upon getting at the truth; for it is not the possession of, but the search for truth, that increases his strength and thereby makes him more perfect.”

— Gotthold Lessing (c.1770), Publications; quoted by Ludwig Buchner (1855) in Force and Matter (pg. xiii)