Comment by idatum
1 year ago
Quote from Harry Lime character in The Third Man:
"...in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
FWIW, cuckoo clocks originated in the Black Forest, southern Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock
But it reminds me of the famous quote from Bertrand Russell
> My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.
(Bertrand Russell / 1872-1970 / Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? / 1930)
http://atheisme.free.fr/Quotes/Russell.htm
Paraphrased from other Internet threads where that quote came up: Something about their mercenary army, the Swiss Guard, Euler, Einstein, the Bernoulli family, 28 Nobel laureates, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_inventions_and_d...
I think Euler by himself competes pretty well with all that on behalf of the Swiss.
great quote