Recognize any of these names: Owen D. Young, Pierre Laval, Hugh S. Johnson, James F. Byrnes, Mohammed Mossadegh, Harlow Curtis?

You should; according to Time magazine, these are all people who have been designate as “Man of the Year” by Time, indicating they had the greatest impact in that year of all persons living on Earth. The celebrity of today is all but forgotten tomorrow.

Around a man who has been pushed into the limelight a legend begins to grow as it does around a dead man. But a dead man is in no danger of yielding to the temptation to nourish his legend, or accept its picture as reality. I pity the man who falls in love with his image as it is drawn by public opinion during the honeymoon of publicity.

Dag Hammarskjold, quoted in C. Swindoll, The Grace Awakening, Word, 1990, pp. 238-9