The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Prussia in 1844. After the death of his father, a Lutheran minister, Nietzsche was raised from the age of five by his mother in a household of women. In 1869 he was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, where he taught until 1879 when poor health forced him to retire. He never recovered from a nervous breakdown in 1889 and died eleven years later.

Known for saying that 'god is dead,' Nietzsche propounded his metaphysical construct of the superiority of the disciplined individual (superman) living in the present over traditional values derived from Christianity and its emphasis on heavenly rewards. His ideas were appropriated by the Fascists, who turned his theories into social realities that he had never intended.

The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) ranks among the most important figures in Western psychology. Freud is responsible for the theories of parapraxis (Freudian slips), dreams as wish fulfillment, the Oedipus complex, repression, the unconscious mind, and other ground-breaking concepts.

D. H. Lawrence, born in England in 1885, is one of the key figures in literary modernism. Among his most notable novels are Sons and Lovers (1913), Women in Love (1920) and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). Kangaroo (1923) was published the year after Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, spent three months in Australia. Lawrence died in France in 1930.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803-April 27, 1882) was a famous lecturer, philosopher, poet, and writer. He led the transcendentalist movement of the 1800s, mentored Henry David Thoreau, and was a pioneer of multiculturalism in American writing.

Charles Darwin (1809–19 April 1882) is considered the most important English naturalist of all time. He established the theories of natural selection and evolution.

His theory of evolution was published as On the Origin of Species in 1859, and by the 1870s is was widely accepted as fact.

Voltaire (1694 1778) was a French man of letters and a leading figure of the Enlightenment, known for his outspokenness and polemical writings.

The philosophical novellas Candide and Zadig are among his most celebrated works.

Wallace D. Wattles (1860-1911) was the author of numerous books, the best known of which is The Science of Getting Rich.

He experienced failure after failure in his early life until after many years of study and experimentation he formulated a set of principles that, with scientific precision, create financial and spiritual wealth.

He died a prosperous man in 1911.

Napoleon Hill was born in 1883 in a one-room cabin on the Pound River in Wise County, Virginia. He began his writing career at age 13 as a "mountain reporter" for small town newspapers and went on to become America's most beloved motivational author.

Hill passed away in November 1970 after a long and successful career writing, teaching, and lecturing about the principles of success. Dr. Hill's work stands as a monument to individual achievement and is the cornerstone of modern motivation. His book, Think and Grow Rich, is the all-time bestseller in the field.

Hill established the Foundation as a nonprofit educational institution whose mission is to perpetuate his philosophy of leadership, self-motivation, and individual achievement.

His books, audio cassettes, videotapes, and other motivational products are made available to you as a service of the Foundation so that you may build your own library of personal achievement materials...and help you acquire financial wealth and the true riches of life.

Richard Wagner (1813-83) redefined opera and had an overwhelming impact on German and Western culture.

His major works include Lohengrin, Tannhauser, Tristan and Isolde, Parzival and the four parts of The Ring of the Nibelung- The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried and Twilight of the Gods.

Plato ranks among the most familiar ancient philosophers, along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle.

In addition to writing philosophical dialogues - used to teach logic, ethics, rhetoric, religion, and mathematics as well as philosophy - he founded Athens' Academy, the Western world's first institution of higher learning.

James Allen was born in Leicester, England, in 1864. He took his first job at age 15 to support his family, after his father was murdered while looking for work in America. Allen was employed as a factory knitter and a private secretary until the early 1900s, when he became increasingly known for his motivational writing.

His 1903 work As a Man Thinketh earned him worldwide fame as a prophet of inspirational thinking and influenced a who's-who of self-help writers, including Napoleon Hill.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) was born in Concord, Massachusetts and educated at Harvard. He became a follower and a friend of Emerson, and described himself as a mystic and a transcendentalist.

Although he published only two books in his lifetime, Walden is a literary masterpeice and one of the most significant books of the nineteenth century.

Philosopher, scientist, and historian Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was a key figure in the Britain's transition from medieval to modern thinking.

His masterpiece, Leviathan, established the social contract theory that served as the foundation for most of Western political philosophy, and his view of mankind as essentially self-centered and competitive gave rise to the term "Hobbesian."

Dale Carnegie, known as 'the arch-priest of the art of making friends', pioneered the development of personal business skills, self-confidence and motivational techniques.

His books most notably How to Win Friends and Influence People - have sold tens of millions worldwide and, even in today's changing climate, they remain as popular

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland, 1818. He was separated from his mother as a baby and lived with his grandmother up to the age of eight, when he was sent to live as a house servant, a field hand and then a ship caulker. He escaped to New York in 1838 and seven years later published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an autobiography of his life as a slave, which became an instant bestseller.

Douglass rose to fame as a powerful orator and spent the rest of his life campaigning for equality. He became a national leader of the abolitionist movement, a consultant to Abraham Lincoln in the civil rights movement and a passionate supporter of the women’s rights movement. He died in 1895.

Hermann Hesse was born in Calw in 1877, a town in the north of the Black Forest. As a child he was constantly at odds with his religious upbringing and education.

His experiences of childhood, adolescence and the desire to break into the world as an artist would form the matter of his first three novels, Peter Camenzind, The Prodigy and Gertrude. Following an ever-present spiritual thirst, Hesse read widely on theosophy, Buddhism and the burgeoning field of psychoanalysis, even becoming a patient of Carl Jung.

This seeking is evident in some of his greatest novels, such as Demian, Steppenwolf, and Siddhartha. Little known outside of Germany at the time of his death in 1962 the arrival of the first English translation of Siddhartha in 1954 struck a chord with the counterculture movement of the 1960s. Soon after, Hesse became one of the most widely read and translated European authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.

Aristotle was born in the Macedonian city of Stagira in 384 BC, and died in 322. He studied in Plato's Academy in Athens and later became tutor to Alexander the Great, before establishing his own school in Athens, called the Lyceum. His writings, which were of extraordinary range, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient, medieval and modern philosophy. Many of them have survived, including The Nicomachean Ethics, The Politics and Poetics, among others.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was born in AD 121, in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. At first he was called Marcus Annius Verus, but his well-born father died young and he was adopted, first by his grandfather, who had him educated by a number of excellent tutors, and then, when he was sixteen, by Aurelius Antoninus, his uncle by marriage, who had been adopted as Hadrian's heir, and had no surviving sons of his own. Aurelius Antoninus changed Marcus' name to his own and betrothed him to his daughter, Faustina. She bore fourteen children, but none of the sons survived Marcus except the worthless Commodus, who eventually succeeded Marcus as emperor.

On the death of Antoninus in 161, Marcus made Lucius Verus, another adopted son of his uncle, his colleague in government. There were thus two emperors ruling jointly for the first time in Roman history. The Empire then entered a period troubled by natural disasters, famine, plague and floods, and by invasions of barbarians. In 168, one year before the death of Verus left him in sole command, Marcus went to join his legions on the Danube.

Apart from a brief visit to Asia to crush the revolt of Avidius Cassius, whose followers he treated with clemency, Marcus stayed in the Danube region and consoled his somewhat melancholy life there by writing a series of reflections which he called simply To Himself. These are now known as his Meditations, and they reveal a mind of great humanity and natural humility, formed in the Stoic tradition, which has long been admired in the Christian world. He died, of an infectious disease, perhaps, in camp on 17 March AD 180.

Alexandre Dumas was born July 24, 1802, at Villiers-Cotterets, France, the son of Napoleon's famous mulatto general, Dumas.

Alexandre Dumas began writing at an early age and saw his first success in a play he wrote entitled Henri III et sa Cour (1829). A prolific author, Dumas was also an adventurer and took part in the Revolution of 1830.

Dumas is most famous for his brilliant historical novels, which he wrote with collaborators, mainly Auguste Maquet, and which were serialized in the popular press of the day.

His most popular works are The Three Musketeers (1844), The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45), and The Man in Iron Mask (1848-50). Dumas made and lost several fortunes, and died penniless on December 5, 1870.

Karl Marx was born in the German city of Trier in 1818. He studied law in Bonn and Berlin at his father's insistence, but his true interests lay elsewhere and, in 1841, he received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena.

For the next two years he wrote for radical left-wing newspapers before moving to Paris with his wife, Jenny; there he became a communist and met his lifelong friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels.

They published their revolutionary pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, in 1848 and Marx moved to London a year later. He spent the rest of his life there - often in considerable poverty - while he wrote his magnum opus of political theory, Das Kapital. Karl Marx died in 1883.

Jules Verne (1828-1905) was a French novelist and playwright best known for his epic adventures, including Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days.

A true visionary and master storyteller, Verne foresaw the skyscraper, the submarine, and the airplane, among many other inventions, and he is often regarded as the 'Father of Science Fiction.'

Herbert George "H. G." Wells (September 21, 1866-August 13, 1946) was an English author, best known for his work in the "speculative fiction" genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics, and social commentary.

Wells is sometimes called "The Father of Science Fiction," along with Jules Verne. The War of the Worlds was written in the age of British colonialism, and Wells came up with the idea for the story while he and his brother were imagining what might happen if someone came to colonize England the way England had other countries.

Not much is known about the legendary LAO TZU, to whom authorship of the TAO TEH CHING is popularly attributed. Some scholars believe the author was an elder contemporary of Confucius.

Sun Tzu is a honorific title bestowed upon Sūn Wu (c. 544-496 BC), the author of The Art of War, an immensely influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy.

He is also one of the earliest realists in international relations theory. In the author's name, Sūn Wu, the character wu, meaning "military", is the same as the character in wu shu, or martial art. Sun Wu also has a courtesy name, Chang Qing (Cháng Qīng).