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Gulliver's Travels Quotes by Jonathan Swift: Context & Meanings

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Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

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“Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.”

Jonathan Swift

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Gulliver observes that judgments of size depend on a point of comparison, a lesson made vivid when his own body shifts from giant-scale in Lilliput to tiny scale in Brobdingnag.

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Gulliver's Travels, Part II, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #829. Lemuel Gulliver reflects that nothing is great or little except by comparison after finding himself tiny among the inhabitants of Brobdingnag, reversing his earlier giant-scale experience in Lilliput. This is fictional first-person satire and perspective play, not a universal philosophical proof.

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