This paper introduces a postulate explicitly forbidding the extraction of an infinite amount of energy from a thermodynamic system. It also introduces the assumption that no measuring equipment is capable of detecting arbitrarily small energy exchanges. The Kelvin formulation of the second law is reinterpreted accordingly. Then statements related to both the unattainability version and the entropic version of the third law are derived. The value of any common thermodynamic potential of a one-component system at absolute zero of temperature is ascertained if some assumptions with regard to the state space can be made. The point of view is the phenomenological, macroscopic and non-statistical one of classical thermodynamics.