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"I do not choose to be a common man,
It is my right to be uncommon … if I can,
I seek opportunity … not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen.
Humbled and dulled by having the
State look after me.
I want to take the calculated risk;
To dream and to build.
To fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole;
I prefer the challenges of life
To the guaranteed existence;
The thrill of fulfillment
To the stale calm of Utopia.
I will not trade freedom for beneficence
Nor my dignity for a handout
I will never cower before any master
Nor bend to any threat.
It is my heritage to stand erect.
Proud and unafraid;
To think and act for myself,
To enjoy the benefit of my creations
And to face the world boldly and say:
This, with God’s help, I have done
All this is what it means
To be an Entrepreneur.”

Though I first started off thinking this piece was by Theodore Roosevelt, while digging through various online and book sources I came across indications that the author of the original text was either Thomas Paine or Dean Alfange.

Some people think it is taken from Common Sense, by the Englishman Thomas Paine (1737-1809). This particular passage is referred to as "The Entrepreneur’s Credo".

Wikipedia says:

Alfange is remembered for a short statement he wrote in the 1950s entitled "An American's Creed" or simply "My Creed". The creed originally appeared in This Week Magazine, and a condensed version appeared in Reader's Digest in both the October 1952 and January 1954 issues. The Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge gave Alfange an award for the composition in 1952.

The piece isn't included in Paine's "Common Sense".

Does anyone have any idea of where and from whose hand the text actually originates? Could it have been written by someone else?

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  • It doesn't appear in a PDF copy of the Paine I found. If "the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge gave Alfange an award for the composition in 1952", doesn't that suggest that he did indeed write it?
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Commented Jan 10, 2015 at 21:07
  • Sure, that suggests so, but I need a source that gives factual data. A published text, or so.
    – rhondyharrisbitch
    Commented Jan 10, 2015 at 21:11
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    It couldn't possibly be Thomas Paine. It bears no characteristics of late-eighteenth-century thinking at all. It is almost certainly a 20th century sentiment.
    – WS2
    Commented Jan 10, 2015 at 22:37

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The difference between the final lines of the OP's quotation ("This, with God’s help, I have done/All this is what it means/To be an Entrepreneur.”) and the quotation from Dean Alfange cited in Andrew Leach's answer ("this I have done. All this is what it means to be an American") greatly intrigued me.

So I ran a couple of Google Books searches for those endings. The results indicate that the entrepreneur-exalting wording was an alteration introduced and adopted by the Board of Trustees of the International Entrepreneurs' Association (IEA) in April 1976. This evident from the following combined snippet from Chase Revel, The Truth About Small Business Profits (1979):

I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole; I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, to enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say: to face the world boldly and say: This, with God's help, I have done. All this is what it means to be an Entrepreneur." Adopted by the Board of Trustees of International Entrepreneurs' Association (IEA) April 1976. Used with IEA's permission.

Dean Alfange's original wording ended in "this I have done. All this is what it means to be an American," as is clear from its inclusion in multiple sources from the 1950s and 1960s, including in Scene: The International East-West Magazine, volume 4 (1952), which attributes the quotation to "DEAN ALFANGE. from the Congressional Record." Members of Congress admired it so much that they put it in the 1952 Congressional Record twice, at page A-18 and again at page A-349.

I also discovered that entrepreneurs aren't alone in bowdlerizing Alfange's wording to aggrandize their particular group. We also have this version from The Fortnightly Review of the Chicago Dental Society, volume 60 (1970):

I will not trade freedom for beneficence, nor dignity for a handout. It is my heritage to think and act for myself; enjoy the benefit of my creations; and to face the world boldly and say, "This I have done". All this is what it means to be an American and a member of the dental profession.—Elmer Ebert.

And this from The State of American Agriculture: Hearings before the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, United States Senate (1978):

It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid, to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say : "This I have done." All this is what it means to be an AMERICAN FARMER!

And the New York State Bar Journal (1962)—among other sources—adds a little sexist fillip to the creed:

It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid, to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say: "This — I have done!" All this is what it means to be a MAN: all this is what it means to be — an AMERICAN!

But unlike the dentists and the farmers and the lawyers, the entrepreneurs wrote "American" completely out of the creed, as well as writing "God" into it. I wonder how Dean Alfange felt about that (he died in 1989).

A side note on 'entrepreneur'

According to Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003), entrepreneur didn't enter English until 1852; Thomas Paine died in 1809. I don't recall entrepreneur becoming an ideological totem word among especially pro-business politicians until Ronald Reagan's presidency in the 1980s, but evidently the IEA was already preparing the way for its ascendancy back in the 1970s.

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    Interesting post. I was interested in knowing where the quote originates, that being Dean Alfange, correct?
    – rhondyharrisbitch
    Commented Jan 11, 2015 at 4:31
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    @Triplexriku Yes.
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Commented Jan 11, 2015 at 10:08
  • I'm wondering about your use of the word "bowdlerizing". I thought it meant to censor the racy parts of a story. Not sure how it applies here.
    – bof
    Commented Aug 27, 2017 at 7:10
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The comments regarding the bastardization of the Alfange piece are correct. It did end with "American". I received a copy from Dean in 1972 at a conference in Chicago, and that is the wording on my copy. In the few subsequent conversations I had with Dean he made no mention of the use by others of the piece. He did not seem to be a person who would be concerned or offended by such use. I do think he would naturally have appreciated attribution. I spoke to Dean's son a few years after Dean's passing and he said his father never talked about that statement. Hope this helps. Steve Anderson Austin, Tx

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It was by Dean Alfange, attested by the Library of Congress in the book Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations on page 16. It appears that the quotation appeared at the end of his entry in Who's Who in America for several years.

Scan of book via Google Books

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations ed Library of Congress (James H Billington), pub Courier Corporation 2010. ISBN 0486472884

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  • I suppose that this doesn't mean that he couldn't have borrowed it from Thomas Paine, but I would expect the Library of Congress to have picked up on quoting one of the fathers of the Revolution.
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Commented Jan 10, 2015 at 21:41
  • Great post. You're correct, though this should suffice.
    – rhondyharrisbitch
    Commented Jan 10, 2015 at 21:59
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    @AndrewLeach Thomas Paine, and late-eighteenth-century thinking was all about 'rights' and the origins of those rights, whether they were 'natural' -per Sieyes and the French Revolution, or possessions acquired over centuries e.g 'the (so-called) rights of a free-born Englishman' e.g 'No taxation without representation'. OP's quotation shows all the hallmarks of a much later post-Marxist society, quintessentially 1950s I would say.
    – WS2
    Commented Jan 11, 2015 at 0:07
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This quote is Alfange's VERSION of a bit by Paine. Very little has been changed. Here's Paine's original.... https://www.utdallas.edu/~tfarage/blog/FavoriteQuotes/IDoNotChooseToBeACommonManByThomasPaine.html

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Thomas Paine wrote this in his opposition to the practice of human slavery.

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    This would be a better answer if it had a citation that others could confirm.
    – Davo
    Commented Aug 27, 2018 at 13:06
  • @EuegeneAnderson Welcome to the site Eugene! Do you have a source you can add to this answer?
    – Lumberjack
    Commented Aug 28, 2018 at 17:38
  • This source in particular seems to refute your claim and give attribution to Dean Alfange.
    – Lumberjack
    Commented Aug 28, 2018 at 17:39

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