Euclid — "What do I gain by learning these things?"
What do I gain by learning these things?
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Euclid
"What has been affirmed without proof can also be denied without proof."
"And when the lines containing the angle are straight, the angle is called rectilineal."
"And the whole is greater than the part."
"And the point is called the center of the circle."
"To construct a square on a given straight line."
Details
Reported response to a student who, after learning the first theorem, asked what he would get by learning such things. Euclid then called his slave and said, 'Give him three pence, since he must make gain out of what he learns.'
Date: c. 300 BCE
EducationalVerification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: grok
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
Knowledge doesn't need to pay you back. This quote challenges the transactional view of education — the idea that you should only learn what generates profit or advantage. It asserts that truth and rigor have intrinsic worth independent of material reward. Studying something deeply, simply because it is true and knowable, is itself a sufficient reason. Immediate utility is the wrong measure of whether learning matters.
Relevance to Euclid
Euclid spent his life systematizing geometry in Elements — thirteen books of pure, rigorous proofs with no commercial purpose whatsoever. When a student demanded to know what practical benefit geometry offered, Euclid reportedly had a slave hand the student coins sarcastically, saying he 'must make gain out of what he learns.' His entire career embodied the conviction that mathematics exists to reveal truth, not to enrich its students.
The era
Around 300 BCE in Alexandria under Ptolemy I, Greek philosophical tradition — especially Platonism — held that abstract knowledge, particularly mathematics, represented the highest human pursuit. Sophists openly charged fees for practical rhetoric instruction, making pure theoretical study a deliberate counterstatement. Euclid worked within the newly founded Library of Alexandria, an institution built to accumulate knowledge for its own sake, where intellectual prestige came from rigor, not commercial application.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].