Samuel Smiles
Samuel Smiles was a British author and government reformer. Although he campaigned on a Chartist platform, he promoted the idea that more progress would come from new attitudes than from new laws. His primary work, Self-Help (1859), promoted thrift and claimed that poverty was caused largely by irresponsible habits, while also attacking materialism and laissez-faire government. It has been called "the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism" and had lasting effects on British political thought.
23 December 1812
Born on the same birth date (23 December 1812): Henri-Alexandre Wallon
Born on the same birth day (23 December): Agnes Milowka • Anna J. Harrison • Balázs Dzsudzsák • Beau Champion • Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve • Eddie Vedder • Esthero • Frederic Forrest • Frederick Augustus I of Saxony • Grace Knight • Jim Ferguson • Lorna Tolentino • Michael Chopra • Michalis Klokidis • Niels Kaj Jerne • Otis Grant • Reinhold Weege • René Tretschok • Scott Gomez • Stephen Timoshenko • Susan Lucci
Born in the same month (December 1812): Henri-Alexandre Wallon • John Sandfield Macdonald • Karl Eduard Zachariae von Lingenthal • Laura M. Thurston • Robert Spear Hudson • Stuart Donaldson • Vilhelm Petersen (painter)