The Portrait Gallery
Step into the gallery of great minds
"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
Polymath • Statesman • Inventor
Benjamin Franklin
1706–1790
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
Transcendentalist • Essayist • Poet
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803–1882
"The history of the world is but the biography of great men."
Historian • Satirist • Philosopher
Thomas Carlyle
1795–1881
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
Naturalist • Essayist • Transcendentalist
Henry David Thoreau
1817–1862
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
Playwright • Poet • Wit
Oscar Wilde
1854–1900
"These are the times that try men's souls."
Revolutionary • Pamphleteer • Philosopher
Thomas Paine
1737–1809
"Que sais-je?" (What do I know?)
Essayist • Skeptic • Humanist
Michel de Montaigne
1533–1592
"The mind is a blank slate."
Empiricist • Physician • Political Theorist
John Locke
1632–1704