As someone building from the ground up, I'll admit my own bias here, but there's real truth to Carlyle's thinking about exceptional individuals—though I'd say it's incomplete. The pattern holds: in early-stage systems, broken institutions, or crisis moments, individual judgment and action move mountains. But it's not black and white. The structural framework constrains what's possible; people then decide which paths to take, sometimes even reshaping the boundaries themselves. Systems create the playing field; leaders author how the game unfolds.