Helen Allingham, 1879
"Great Man” theory of history creator
Historian, philosopher, translator, mathematician, and one of his era’s most influential social commentators; Carlyle developed the “Great Man” theory of history. He postulated and described how the world’s great changes were all caused by the decisions and actions of a very small and elite group of prime movers. He emphasized the essence of heroism as a response to intense challenge and difficulty rather than inherent qualities. In later life, these ego-based theories unfortunately led to a critique of democracy, justifications for fascism, nostalgia for slavery, and support for repressive government. His work in mathematics led to innovative methods still used today and one of his books on the French Revolution inspired Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities.
Lineages
Historians / Journalists
Sartor Resartus (1833)
“Without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories in ever done.”
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“the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.”
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“Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.”
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“Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.”
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“He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything”
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“Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.”
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“When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.”
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“Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice... Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.”
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“Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”
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“A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.”
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“Work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.”
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“Experience is the best of school masters, but the school fees are heavy.”
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“If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.”
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“Today is not yesterday: we change. How can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed is painful; yet ever needful”
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“The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then”
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“Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations. No pressure, no diamonds.”
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“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”
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“If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.”
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“Our life is not really a mutual helpfulness; but rather, it's fair competition cloaked under due laws of war; it's a mutual hostility.”
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“No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.”
from Sartor Resartus (1833)
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“lighting up our 19th Century with the light of a powerful, penetrating and perfectly honest intellect of the first-class”
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“the grain of sense is so smothered in a sack of the sheerest trash….He has one idea – a hatred of spoken and acted falsehood; and on this he harps”
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