the initiative individual...........

 

      Here the initiative individual—the "great man," the "hero," the "genius"—regains his place as a formative force in history.  His not quite the god that Carlyle described, he grows out of his time and land, and is the product and symbol of events as well as their agent and voice; without some situation requiring a new response his new ideas would be untimely and impractical.  When he is a hero of action, the demands of his position and the exaltation of crisis develop and inflate him to such magnitude and powers as would in normal times have remained potential and untapped.  But he is not merely an effect.  Events take place through him as well as around him, his ideas and decisions enter vitally into the course of history.  At times his eloquence, like Churchill's, may be worth a thousand regiments: his foresight in strategy and tactics, like Napoleon's, may win battles and campaigns and establish states.  If he is a prophet like Mohammed, wise in the means of inspiring men, his words may raise a poor and disadvantaged people to unpremeditated ambitions and surprising power.  A Pasteur, a Morse, an Edison, a Ford, a Wright, a Marx, a Lenin, a Mao Tse-tung are effects of numberless causes, and causes of endless effects.

-Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History