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 | The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (May 2022) |
A self-made man is a person whose success is of their own making.
Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, has been described as the greatest exemplar of the self-made man.[1][2] Inspired by Franklin's autobiography, Frederick Douglass developed the concept of the self-made man in a series of lectures that spanned decades starting in 1879.
Originally, the term referred to an individual who arises from a poor or otherwise disadvantaged background to eminence in financial, political or other areas by nurturing qualities, such as perseverance and diligence, as opposed to achieving these goals through inherited fortune, family connections, or other privileges. By the mid-1950s, success in the United States generally implied "business success".
- ^ Pine, Frank Woodworth, ed. (1916). "Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin". Illustrated by E. Boyd Smith. Henry Holt and Company via Gutenberg Press.
- ^ Swansburg, John (September 29, 2014). "The Self-Made Man: The story of America's most pliable, pernicious, irrepressible myth". Slate. Retrieved November 12, 2017.