To determine the main idea of the passage, we need to assess the central message conveyed by the text. The passage focuses on Abraham Lincoln's self-education through reading, despite having minimal formal schooling. Below is the step-by-step explanation leading to the correct answer:
Given that the passage clearly highlights Lincoln's journey of self-education and his appreciation for reading, the correct answer is "Abraham Lincoln demonstrated the value of reading." This option captures the essence of the passage, as it underscores the theme of Lincoln's self-improvement through literature.
Let's examine the other options and explain why they do not represent the main idea:
To solve the question about what Abraham Lincoln accomplished, we need to analyze each of the provided options in light of the information given about him.
Based on this analysis, the correct answer is the option that Lincoln did not accomplish: Establishing the Lincoln Memorial.
To solve the given question about a "voracious reader," we need to understand the meaning of the term within the provided context. A voracious reader is someone who engages in reading with great enthusiasm and frequency. This habit is characterized by a strong appetite or eagerness for reading, which often results in a person making reading a regular and significant part of their daily routine.
Let's evaluate the given options:
In conclusion, the correct answer is "A person who makes reading a regular habit," as it perfectly encapsulates the meaning of a voracious reader, someone who frequently reads because they have made it a regular part of their life.
The question asks for the word that is most similar in meaning to "interpreted" as used in the given passage. The options provided are: Renowend, Ignorant, Threatened, Construed, and Deligent. Let's analyze the context and meanings of these words to determine the correct answer.
The question asks about the lesson that can be learned from the life of Abraham Lincoln based on the provided passage. Let's analyze the relevant parts:
Based on these points, the option "Good reading habits can help a person do great things" is the most suitable answer. This option is justified since the passage emphasizes Lincoln's self-education through reading as a pivotal factor in his successful leadership.
Thus, the lesson from Abraham Lincoln's life is that cultivating good reading habits can facilitate personal and professional growth, enabling individuals to achieve greatness, as supported by the passage.
The question asks about the current influence of Abraham Lincoln on students today. To determine the correct answer, let's analyze each option in the context of the provided comprehension passage.
Therefore, based on the comprehension passage, the correct answer is that Abraham Lincoln's speeches are still quoted and studied today. This reflects his lasting educational and cultural influence through literature and oration, as supported by the text.
The question asks us to identify which factor did not prevent Abraham Lincoln from becoming a great leader. Let's analyze each option based on the given comprehension.
Based on the analysis, the correct answer is Lack of public school education because it explicitly did not prevent Lincoln from achieving greatness according to the passage.
The question pertains to the meaning of the word "abolished" within the context of the given passage about Abraham Lincoln. In the passage, it is mentioned that slavery was "abolished" through Lincoln's leadership. To understand this, let's analyze each of the provided options:
Now, let's relate these meanings to the specific context of the passage:
Thus, the word "abolished" in the passage is best captured by the phrase "Do away with," which means to eliminate or put an end to something. The correct answer is Do away with.
The comprehension passage elaborates on Lincoln's self-education and leadership qualities. It explicitly states his role in leading the nation through the Civil War, providing a clear answer to the question. The Civil War, fought from 1861 to 1865, was crucial in shaping Lincoln’s reputation as a key leader opposed to slavery.


When people who are talking don’t share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. Such understanding is possible through the negotiation of meaning. To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. You need enough diversity of cultural and personal experience to be aware that divergent world views exist and what they might be like. You also need the flexibility in world view, and a generous tolerance for mistakes, as well as a talent for finding the right metaphor to communicate the relevant parts of unshared experiences or to highlight the shared experiences while demphasizing the others. Metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience. This skill consists, in large measure, of the ability to bend your world view and adjust the way you categorize your experiences. Problems of mutual understanding are not exotic; they arise in all extended conversations where understanding is important.
When it really counts, meaning is almost never communicated according to the CONDUIT metaphor, that is, where one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition to another by means of expressions in a common language, where both parties have all the relevant common knowledge, assumptions, values, etc. When the chips are down, meaning is negotiated: you slowly figure out what you have in common, what it is safe to talk about, how you can communicate unshared experience or create a shared vision. With enough flexibility in bending your world view and with luck and charity, you may achieve some mutual understanding.
Communication theories based on the CONDUIT metaphor turn from the pathetic to the evil when they are applied indiscriminately on a large scale, say, in government surveillance or computerized files. There, what is most crucial for real understanding is almost never included, and it is assumed that the words in the file have meaning in themselves—disembodied, objective, understandable meaning. When a society lives by the CONDUITmetaphor on a large scale, misunderstanding, persecution, and much worse are the likely products.
Later, I realized that reviewing the history of nuclear physics served another purpose as well: It gave the lie to the naive belief that the physicists could have come together when nuclear fission was discovered (in Nazi Germany!) and agreed to keep the discovery a secret, thereby sparing humanity such a burden. No. Given the development of nuclear physics up to 1938, development that physicists throughout the world pursued in all innocence of any intention of finding the engine of a new weapon of mass destruction—only one of them, the remarkable Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, took that possibility seriously—the discovery of nuclear fission was inevitable. To stop it, you would have had to stop physics. If German scientists hadn’t made the discovery when they did, French, American, Russian, Italian, or Danish scientists would have done so, almost certainly within days or weeks. They were all working at the same cutting edge, trying to understand the strange results of a simple experiment bombarding uranium with neutrons. Here was no Faustian bargain, as movie directors and other naifs still find it intellectually challenging to imagine. Here was no evil machinery that the noble scientists might hide from the problems and the generals. To the contrary, there was a high insight into how the world works, an energetic reaction, older than the earth, that science had finally devised the instruments and arrangements to coart forth. “Make it seem inevitable,” Louis Pasteur used to advise his students when they prepared to write up their discoveries. But it was. To wish that it might have been ignored or suppressed is barbarous. “Knowledge,” Niels Bohr once noted, “is itself the basis for civilization.” You cannot have the one without the other; the one depends upon the other. Nor can you have only benevolent knowledge; the scientific method doesn’t filter for benevolence. Knowledge has consequences, not always intended, not always comfortable, but always welcome. The earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. “It is a profound and necessary truth,” Robert Oppenheimer would say, “that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.”
...Bohr proposed once that the goal of science is not universal truth. Rather, he argued, the modest but relentless goal of science is “the gradual removal of prejudices.” The discovery that the earth revolves around the sun has gradually removed the prejudice that the earth is the center of the universe. The discovery of microbes is gradually removing the prejudice that disease is a punishment from God. The discovery of evolution is gradually removing the prejudice that Homo sapiens is a separate and special creation.
If the price of a commodity increases by 25%, by what percentage should the consumption be reduced to keep the expenditure the same?
A shopkeeper marks his goods 40% above cost price and offers a 10% discount. What is his percentage profit?