Self-Help: Heaven Helps Those Who Help Themselves

Samuel Smiles was a Scottish doctor and journalist who loved collecting the life stories of ordinary people who had made something of themselves.His book Self-Help sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was translated into many languages, including Japanese and Korean, where its first line became a famous proverb.

“‘Heaven helps those who help themselves’ is a well-tested saying that contains, in a few words, the results of vast human experience.The spirit of self-help is the root of all real growth in a person, and seen in the lives of many, it is the true source of a nation’s strength.Help from outside often weakens, but help from within always strengthens.Whatever is done for people takes away, to some extent, the need to do it for themselves.

Even the best institutions can give a person no active help; the most they can do is leave him free to improve himself.Laws, wisely made, can protect people as they enjoy the fruits of their work.But no law, however strict, can make the lazy hard-working, the wasteful careful, or the drunken sober.Such changes can only come through each person’s own action, thrift and self-control: through better habits rather than greater rights.

The government of a nation is usually only a reflection of the people in it.A noble people will be nobly ruled, and an ignorant and corrupt people will be badly ruled.National progress is the sum of each person’s hard work, energy and honesty, just as national decline is the sum of each person’s laziness, selfishness and vice.”