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): Akihito • Andres Alver • Bill Rodgers (runner) • Harry Judd • James Gregory (actor) • James Stockdale • Jeanie Lambe • János Murkovics • Karyn Bryant • Lady Starlight • Nelson Shanks • Pierre Brissaud • Robert Labine

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)