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Ralph Waldo Emerson ~ (1803 –1882) American poet, philosopher, essayist and abolitionist.  His first two collections of "Essays" First Series (1841) and  Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include  "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet",  "Experience" and "Nature". His work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him. , He wrote: "In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man" Wikipedia

Theodore Roosevelt, (1858-1919) - He became the 26th American President when he was not quite 43, as the result of the assassination of President McKinley. He served from 1901 to 1909 bringing new excitement and power to the Presidency, as he vigorously led Congress and the American public toward progressive reforms and a strong foreign policy. He took the view that the President as a “steward of the people” should take whatever action necessary for the public good unless expressly forbidden by law or the Constitution.”

Voltaire - (1694-1778)  François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plume Voltaire. was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of church and state. He was one of the greatest of all French writers.

Stendhal,  (1783 – 1842), Marie-Henri Beyle known by his nom de plume Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. He is highly regarded for the acute analysis of his characters' psychology and considered one of the early and foremost practitioners of realism. Among his novels novels are Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839) A self-proclaimed egotist, he coined the same characteristic in his characters' "Beylism". 

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)  British politician, army officer, and writer.

Aristotle (Aristotélēs, pronounced (aristotélɛːs) (384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. One of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy. Aristotle’s intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts. Aristotelian concepts remain embedded in Western thinking. More

Jorge Luis Borges'  (August 24, 1899–June 14, 1986) in “Borges and I” — his classic parable of selfhood, exploring the divide between private person and public persona that each of us must live with and live into. It appears in Labyrinths (public library) — a collection of Borges’s stories, essays, parables, and other writings, originally published in 1962  More at The Marginalian ➜ 

Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist and poet. He was a key figure in Spanish language and universal literature.

John Archibald Wheeler (1911 – 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and is best known for popularizing the term "black hole, as to objects with gravitational collapse already predicted during the early 20th century, for inventing the terms "quantum foam", "neutron moderator", "wormhole" and for hypothesizing the "one-electron universe". Stephen Hawking referred to him as the "hero of the black hole story".

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924) The 28th president of the United States, He changed the nation's economic policies and led the United States into World War I in 1917. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations and was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize. He suffered a paralytic stroke which left him incapacitated for the rest of his second term in office, causing the worst crisis of presidential disability in American History. Eventually, the 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967, allowed for constitutional measures to deal with temporary or permanent incapacity of the President in office. Britannica

Baltasar Gracián, S. J. (1601 - 1658), in full, Baltasar Gracián Morales, was a Spanish Jesuit, prose writer and philosopher. He is known as  one of the leading exponents of conceptism, a literary movement of the Spanish Golden Age of literature characterized by a rapid rhythm, directness, simple vocabulary, witty metaphors, and wordplay. In this style, multiple meanings are conveyed in a very concise manner, and conceptual intricacies are emphasized over elaborate vocabulary. His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and the appeal of his timeless advice focusing on honesty and kindness endures to this date.

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 - April 15, 1865)