The sentence that sounds obvious today may have needed courage when it was first written.

Ideas lose their danger once they win. A line that reads as common sense now may have cost someone their position, their friends, or years of argument at the time it was written, and the very success of the argument is what makes it sound unremarkable. Obviousness is often the fossil of a fight that was already won.

When you read something that seems too plain to be impressive, ask what it would have meant to say it then. And when you find yourself hesitating to state something you believe, remember that most plain truths were once uncomfortable to be the first to say.