Self-made man
Term of endearment / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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A self-made man, is a person whose success is of their own making.
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) |
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 hard work, 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".
In the 2022 Princeton University book, The Roots of American Individualism, the author criticizes the concept of 'self-made' in American society as ignoring the role of social structures, privilege, and luck in shaping individual outcomes.[3]