Page 129 - SST Class 05

20 The World’s

Great People

Great People and I

During the course of this book, we have told you about several scientists, inventors and leaders who have
contributed to make this world a better place to live. There are many more people whose work continues
to affect us even decades after they worked and lived. Let us know about a few more of them.

There have been several great people whose keen observation, intelligence, new ideas
and hard work have paved the way for a better world in which we live now. Here are
a few of them.

Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC)
Socrates was a Greek philosopher and teacher. He lived in Athens in
Greece about 2,400 years ago. These were the ignorant times. People

were superstitious; they thought that disease or death was caused
when God was angry. The religion dominated the lives of people.
Socrates saw that the cause of their problems was their lack of logic
and reason. So, he motivated people to believe in the spirit of enquiry Socrates
and truth. He urged them not to accept anything blindly. He said that they should find
the cause behind everything. He said that the truth can be known by asking questions.

What Socrates said was liked by young men in particular. He earned many disciples,
so he turned very popular among them. The rulers and dominant people did not like
this. They said that Socrates was misleading people and undermining their authority.
They asked him to stop, but Socrates was a votary of the truth.

Socrates had to sacrifice his life for the spirit of reason and enquiry. He was made to
drink a cup of poison called hemlock. He drank it most cheerfully in front of his
friends. He died in 399 BC at the age of 70. He is remembered for his ideas even today.

Socrates has not written, we know about him from what Plato, his favourite disciple,
wrote.

Abraham Lincoln (1809 AD - 1865 AD)
Abraham Lincoln was born in a poor family in 1809 in Kentucky (USA). He was very

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