They think great thoughts, cast them abroad, and the thoughts make events.

Thus the early Reformers initiated the Reformation, and with it the liberation of modern thought.

Emerson has said that every institution is to be regarded as but the lengthened shadow of some great man: as Islamism of Mahomet, Puritanism of Calvin, Jesuitism of Loyola, Quakerism of Fox, Methodism of Wesley, Abolitionism of Clarkson.
Great men stamp their mind upon their age and nation--as Luther did upon modern Germany, and Knox upon Scotland.

[1018] And if there be one man more than another that stamped his mind on modern Italy, it was Dante.
During the long centuries of Italian degradation his burning words were as a watchfire and a beacon to all true men.

He was the herald of his nation's liberty--braving persecution, exile, and death, for the love of it.