The golden rule of mechanics

The lever allows you to lift any arbitrarily large loads with little force - as long as the ratio of the lever arms is large enough. The famous exclamation of Archimedes “Give me a fulcrum and I will lift the Earth!” is connected with this fact. However, for a multiple gain in strength, you have to pay for the same multiple loss in distance - this is the golden rule of mechanics. To move the Earth a millimeter, Archimedes would have to describe an arc with the other end of the lever, comparable to the size of our galaxy.