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): Alge Crumpler • Anna J. Harrison • Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa • Holly Madison • James Roosevelt • Karine Polwart • Karl Richard Lepsius • Liis Koger • Louis I, Duke of Bavaria • Martin Opitz • Raymont Harris • Reed Alexander • Spencer Daniels • Vicente del Bosque • Wilhelm Hisinger
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)