Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, - till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881) was a Scottish philosopher satirical writer essayist historian and teacher during the Victorian era. He brought a trenchant style to his social and political criticism and a complex literary style to works such as The French Revolution: A History (1837).