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-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.
Euclid
[The Greek geometer of Alexandria; taught mathematics in the reign of the first Ptolemy, 323 B.C.]
There is no royal road to geometry.
When asked by Ptolemy if the science could not be mastered by some easier method than the ordinary one. Dr. Johnson said, “I hate by-roads in education.”—BOSWELL: Life, 1775. It was a maxim of Dr. Parr’s, “Greek and Latin are consecrated temples which are only to be entered through the vestibule.” Plato wrote over the entrance to the Academy, “He who is ignorant of geometry may remain outside;” which led Goethe to call it “the door of philosophy.”
