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Comment by hassy | Hacker News Reader

Great message, but "self-made" never meant someone who became successful with no outside help. One is self-made if their fortune wasn't inherited, that's it.

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The words "self-made" have an implication that you did it all yourself.

Only if you take everything literally.

To those down-voting me: Firstly, I would invite you to consult a good dictionary. Secondly, I'd invite you to undertake a moment's reflection, which I believe should make readily apparent the utter uselessness of a word that describes not a single person that ever lived.

Hi there, I'm sure everyone reading this knows what 'self-made' usually refers to.

But they also know that Arnold is using artistic licence in pursuit of his objective, which is to convey the importance of having humility and gratitude as you seek to achieve success.

The people downvoting you, I'm quite sure, are doing so because you've perhaps come over as unnecessarily pedantic, given the spirit of this message.

I don't think so. Benjamin Franklin is probably the prototypical self-made man. And you would never claim that "he did it all himself." He wouldn't have claimed that either. It's clear from his Autobiography that there were many people who helped him along his path to success, but that doesn't change the fact that he was a self-made man.

Whatever you think the "official" definition is, when someone says they're "self-made" they are most often using it in a sense closer to the first than the second. It's not strictly with "no" outside help, but they tend to mean that help was minimal and rarely or never for free.

Some people think of it in the first way.

That was the traditional meaning very much like holding up a gold medal winner as an individual achiever. Everyone knows that person had help along the way, but should realize they used that help and their own talent to get the result where others did not.

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