Oration on the Dignity of Man

The Oration on the Dignity of Man (Latin: Oratio de hominis dignitate) is a public discourse composed in 1486 by Pico della Mirandola, an Italian scholar and philosopher of the Renaissance. It remained unpublished until 1496. The Pico Project–a collaboration between the University of Bologna and Brown University–and others have called it the "Manifesto of the Renaissance". In brief, the "dignity" described is that a human can become anything they desire.