Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Euclid


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: Kept.  Cbrown1023  talk  00:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Euclid
While Euclid is certainly notable, the sole quote present on the page is from a third-party and doesn't include any direct quote. —LrdChaos (talk) 15:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Vote closes: 16:00, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep For many ancient people, specially pre-Socrates philosophers (All of "their" quotes were recorded by later people, like Platon, Aristotel and other philosophers) we need to rely on indirect source like that, and "no royal road to geometry" is the most famous his quote. Euclid is also the case. Or you would like to have his fifth axiom (There is only one direct line who run through two points)? --Aphaia 15:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * It's fine to have another person recording and reporting quotes, but only as long as what they're reporting are actually the quotes, otherwise they're just paraphrasing and the quote belongs to the later author, though the idea may still belong to the original source. In this case, the lack of quotation marks (which I don't believe was just an oversight, given the phrasing) indicates to me that what is being presented is not Euclid's words, which is supported by the "About Euclid" section header. —LrdChaos (talk) 15:45, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - I also found this quote cited in Bartlet's as “There is no other royal path which leads to geometry,” said Euclid to Ptolemy, from Commentary on Euclid’s Elements, book ii. chap. iv. Perhaps this source should be used instead of the one currently on the page. ~ UDScott 16:19, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm it seems not "direct source" but to be taken from a commentary (Elements is his book, Commentary might be not, so not worthy to replace with the current one, but put side by side? Or it may be even the possibility the commentary Bartlet's relied is the same author no we're quoting from. --Aphaia 21:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - I might eventually add a few quotes from his works, but its not a top priority for me, and this one very famous quote/anecdote should be sufficient for now. ~ Kalki 22:23, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep Even for modern people, famous quotes are often recorded by third parties.--Cato 22:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep It's a well-known quotation and Euclid is apparently the originator.--Poetlister 18:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. As LrdChaos says, the issue is the sole current quote. I believe that the problem is one of formatting and citation. Other quote compendiums tend to cite the quote as "there is no royal road to geometry", an ancient aphorism whose mellifluous English translation has been reused in other notable quotes. (Examples: Freud's "The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind."; Gerard Manley Hopkins's "It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.") As Aphaia points out, many "quotes" from ancient Greeks are merely citations by others. We could probably attribute the expression directly to Euclid and source it with "Quoted by whomever; cited in whatever" or something similar. I believe we can do this for a famous ancient Greek philosopher/scientist without opening floodgates to unreasonably indirect quotations "from" others. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:22, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep just as we have done with the quote of Appius Claudius Caecus et al. After all, some of the most celebrated people of the ancient world are known to us only through what others have told of them: Socrates, the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus.  In their case, however, since they were quoted in the first person, we don't think of it as an issue.  As far as sourcing, I don't think there is any essential difference between "Alexander said" and "This is what Alexander said," followed by Alexander's words in a first-person guise.  - InvisibleSun 21:05, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.