“When someone achieves greatness in any field such as the arts, science, politics, or business that person’s achievements are more important than any of his or her personal faults.”

Essay topics:

“When someone achieves greatness in any field such as the arts, science, politics, or business that person’s achievements are more important than any of his or her personal faults.”

The course of human history is decorated with individuals able to rise above their peers and reach the zenith in their fields. These individuals are often the subject of intense scrutiny from contemporaneous skeptics and later historians. But no one can lead an exemplary private life all the time; no human being is able to withstand such surveillance and historical scrutiny without personal faults coming to light. Great individuals are no exception. However, it is misguided to focus on their personal faults rather than their achievements. To do so is to miss the importance of their work, without which our culture would be worse off.

For example, Abraham Lincoln was arguably one of the greatest Presidents the United States has ever had. He managed to bring the country through a substantial revolution and to end slavery despite powerful economic and social forces working against him day and night. However, Lincoln was not a saint. He was moody and prone to depressive funks that disrupted his family life and slowly eroded his marriage. These personal faults did not reduce his success as a President. While we do not have to ignore questions about whether he was a depressive, we also should not consider them an important part of his political heritage. In contrast, many people criticize Lincoln’s decision to suspend the right of habeas corpus. This (presumed) failing is not personal in nature, but relates directly to Lincoln’s work in his field. Criticisms of this sort are entirely relevant, whereas personal criticisms are not.

Another example of a great individual dogged by criticism of his personal conduct is Albert Einstein. Einstein developed a number of the most important theories in modern physics, including an explanation of the photoelectric effect, an explanation of Brownian motion, special and general relativity, and Bose-Einstein quantum statistics. Each one of these theories would have been considered a great life’s work for a scientist; for one man to contribute this much is remarkable. However, Einstein also had life-long problems with infidelity. The fact that he cheated on his wife is in no way relevant to his accomplishments in the field of physics, and indeed most references to Einstein properly ignore it. To focus attention on the faults of his personal life is to obscure the impact he made on history.

Great individuals have personal faults, as all human beings do. Yet it is incorrect to assert that these faults detract from those individuals’ accomplishments. We are better able to appreciate the gravity of great accomplishments when we are not burying our heads in the sand, in search of personal failings.

Votes
Average: 1.6 (1 vote)
This essay topic by users
Post date Users Rates Link to Content
2016-08-07 sammy2992 16 view
2015-08-05 nehai 40 view
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Essays by user sammy2992 :

Comments

Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'however', 'if', 'so', 'whereas', 'while', 'for example', 'in contrast']

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.244897959184 0.240241500013 102% => OK
Verbs: 0.142857142857 0.157235817809 91% => OK
Adjectives: 0.108163265306 0.0880659088768 123% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0530612244898 0.0497285424764 107% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0612244897959 0.0444667217837 138% => Less pronouns wanted. Try not to use 'you, I, they, he...' as the subject of a sentence
Prepositions: 0.10612244898 0.12292977631 86% => OK
Participles: 0.0224489795918 0.0406280797675 55% => OK
Conjunctions: 3.02419629292 2.79330140395 108% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0387755102041 0.030933414821 125% => OK
Particles: 0.00204081632653 0.0016655270985 123% => OK
Determiners: 0.0897959183673 0.0997080785238 90% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.00816326530612 0.0249443105267 33% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00612244897959 0.0148568991511 41% => Some subClauses wanted starting by 'Which, Who, What, Whom, Whose.....'

Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2694.0 2732.02544248 99% => OK
No of words: 433.0 452.878318584 96% => OK
Chars per words: 6.22170900693 6.0361032391 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56165014514 4.58838876751 99% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.40415704388 0.366273622748 110% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.321016166282 0.280924506359 114% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.228637413395 0.200843997647 114% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.143187066975 0.132149295362 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.02419629292 2.79330140395 108% => OK
Unique words: 241.0 219.290929204 110% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.556581986143 0.48968727796 114% => OK
Word variations: 65.8856569415 55.4138127331 119% => OK
How many sentences: 24.0 20.6194690265 116% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0416666667 23.380412469 77% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.1626803333 59.4972553346 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 112.25 141.124799967 80% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.0416666667 23.380412469 77% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.375 0.674092028746 56% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.94800884956 81% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.21349557522 0% => OK
Readability: 50.1432832948 51.4728631049 97% => OK
Elegance: 1.45238095238 1.64882698954 88% => OK

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.218125258119 0.391690518653 56% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.0888789035393 0.123202303941 72% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0641057169069 0.077325440228 83% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.427221975264 0.547984918172 78% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.126315096597 0.149214159877 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0771604938785 0.161403998019 48% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0445113062125 0.0892212321368 50% => The sentences are too close to each other.
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.312263507272 0.385218514788 81% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0513649246072 0.0692045440612 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.161561532809 0.275328986314 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0362175012653 0.0653680567796 55% => The ideas may be duplicated in paragraphs.

Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 10.4325221239 86% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 14.0 5.30420353982 264% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.88274336283 20% => More neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 7.0 7.22455752212 97% => OK
Negative topic words: 11.0 3.66592920354 300% => OK
Neutral topic words: 0.0 2.70907079646 0% => More neutral topic words wanted.
Total topic words: 18.0 13.5995575221 132% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader.

Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.