Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914)
Filed under the name Bertha · February 4, 2026
Here's a fun one to bring up at a party where everyone's arguing about something dumb: the first woman ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize spent her whole life campaigning against war and militarism in an era when that was considered, at best, a nice hobby for a woman to have. Bertha von Suttner just kept writing and organizing anyway, decade after decade, until the actual Nobel committee agreed with her. That's a wild amount of patience for an outcome you might not live to see fully realized — my startup died in eighteen months and I still bring up the lesson from it constantly, so imagine dedicating your whole career to something with a much, much longer feedback loop. I think there's something genuinely admirable about people who work on timelines longer than their own applause. My comedy-writer friends give me grief for being an optimist about most things, but even I'll admit some causes just take generations of unglamorous, unrewarded pushing. She pushed. It worked. Rare combo.