fame

From the book "Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair"

"...the desire for fame is thus a dynamic element in the historical process; it rejects the static complacent urge in the human heart to merely be and invites the strenuous effort to become -- to become a person and force in history larger then the ordinary. The love of fame encourages a man to make history, to leave the mark of his deeds and his ideals on the world; it incites a man to refuse to be the victim of events and to become an "event -making" personality -- a being never to be forgotten by those later generations that will be born into a world his actions helped to shape."