We think of great people as being significant, important, and superior and powerful. Having celebrity, merit, prominence and renown.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb to be great as Of ability, quality or eminence of considerably above average.
In 2002 a series of television programs were broadcast on the BBC based on a public opinion poll of the 100 greatest Britons. The top ten were as follows. This list consist of politicians, monarchs, military leaders, entertainers, philanthropists and scientists, and although they are so different and their works so different they are compared here. It is impossible to say whether Shakespeare, arguably the greatest playwright of all time and inspiration for Dickens, Hardy, Coleridge and Tennyson, was greater or less great than Darwin who published the first works on evolution due to the fact that their skill sets and influence were completely different. They both made huge contributions to their particular fields, but I’m sure Darwin would not have been able to write Hamlet and …show more content…
Florence Nightingale’s career is much more remembered than the works of Mary Seacole even though they both nursed to very high standards in the Crimean war. When they returned Nightingales career took off where Seacoles did not. She was forgotten for a century while Nightingale was praised. It is clear to see that Seacole had less opportunity to be remembered and to make as much change as Nightingale did due to her race and her economic situation. Even though these examples show that is only possible to compare peoples greatness if they all had equal opportunities to achieve greatness and if they all we working in the same area of