Samuel Smiles

Railways not only brought fresh, healthy food to the urban poor, they improved the conditions of working animals.

In the 1850s, London could not house enough cows for its population, so dairymen watered down their milk from cholera-infested roadside pumps, adding snails or sheep’s brains to thicken it (more). No legislation could have solved that dilemma of supply and demand. But railways did.

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Intellectual learning is to be respected, but it should never be confused with good character.

Samuel Smiles devoted an entire volume to the subject of character, appreciating that an education is only as good as the moral principles with which it is applied.

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The engineer put his own life on the line for the safety of his fellow-workers in the coal industry.

Cornish Professor of Chemistry and multi-award-winning scientist Sir Humphrey Davy invented a safety-lamp for mines in 1815; but up in Newcastle, colliery employee George (‘Geordie’) Stephenson (1781-1848) was already working on his own design – as if his life depended on it.

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Michelangelo had a message for all serious entrepreneurs.

In business as in life, little things can make a big difference, as this story about Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo (1475-1564) shows.

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A self-made man who never forgot his humble beginnings.

George Stephenson (1781-1848) was an illiterate boy from the North East, who, through his pioneering railways and steam engines, became arguably the most important civil engineer in world history.

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The extraordinary productivity and social mobility of the Victorian era is to the credit not of the governing class, but of the working man.

Samuel Smiles inspired millions of ordinary workers to achieve their dreams. In this passage, he urges them to rely on their own strength of character rather than on the State’s empty promises.

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