Great Man Theory Quotes

Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of 'greatness.' 'Greatness,' it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the 'great' man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a 'great' man can be blamed.

Struggling to end the war and to eliminate slavery once and for all by way of the 13th Amendment, with the amendment's prospective passage undermining the effort to make peace with the Confederacy and vice versa, Lincoln embodied the Great Man theory that leftists disdain.

Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.

Obama likes to quote great men but will never be a great man himself. I can't stand it when our leader goes around apologizing for who we are.

How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?

I don't believe in the Great Man theory of science or history. There are no great men, just men standing on the shoulders of other men and what they have done.

He is the resounding human rebuttal to all Marxist historians who think history is the story of vast and impersonal economic forces. The point of the Churchill Factor is that one man can make all the difference.