The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History

by Sharon McMahon

For all the things one could learn about Paul Revere, he rode a horse and shouted at people is perhaps one of the least interesting.

“I like women better than men. I like fat women better than lean ones…. Girls are a very necessary part of creation. They are full as necessary as boys.

We revolt against the slavery in which women are held by the customs of society—the broken health, the aimless lives, the subordinate position, the helpless dependence, the dishonesties and shams of so-called education. The Higher Education of Women is one of the great world battle-cries for freedom; for right against might.”[16]

Humans aren’t so much afraid of failure as they are of having people watch them fail. The shame doesn’t come from not scaling the summit, it’s from the people who judge you for not having succeeded.

It’s long been a source of amusement to me that some of the greatest thinkers in history, the people of the Enlightenment, the humans who wrote the Constitution and founded the world’s oldest democracy, didn’t know about dinosaurs.

“I am interested in America,” he said. “I do not see how America can go ahead if part of its people are left behind.”[23]

I’d want you to know that great Americans aren’t only people who existed long ago, their faces captured on a frame of black-and-white film. Great Americans live. Whatever year you are reading this in, know that you are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, people who see you and depend on your efforts.