The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Modern advancements have made complex truths accessible to children that once required the greatest sacrifice to discover.
- In plain terms
- Today even children know truths that ancient geniuses would have died to prove.
- What can you take from it?
- Progress allows ordinary people to access knowledge that once cost the greatest minds everything.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What truths do we take for granted today?
- Does easy access make knowledge less valuable?
Another view
This overlooks the value of the struggle involved in original discovery.
More from Ernest Renan
The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.
Permalink to quote #15 When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.
Permalink to quote #17 The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.
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