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Euclid

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Give him a coin, since he must profit by what he learns.
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Said to be a remark made to his servant when a student asked what he would get out of studying geometry.
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A slightly different translation of this remark (in which the coin is anachronistically referred to as 'threepence') is mentioned in The History of Greek Mathematics by Thomas Little Heath (1921), p. 357, where it is attributed to Stobaeus' Floril. iv, p. 205 (Floril. iv refers to volume iv of Stobaeus' Florilegium). The original Greek version of the anecdote can be read here, where it is mentioned that Stobaeus is quoting Serenus, or in the digitized copy of Florilegium on the Internet Archive here (if read online, set the slider at the bottom to location 600/723 to see p. 205, where the quote appears under heading 114).

 
Euclid

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