Who can argue that a brief catalog of famous bachelors reads like a roll call of the architects of Western Civilization?:

Pierre Bayle 

Robert Boyle

Johannes Brahms

Samuel Butler

Robert Burton

Ludwig van Beethoven

Johannes Brahms

Giacomo Casanova 

Frederic Chopin

Nicolaus Copernicus

Eugène Delacroix

Rene Descartes  

Gustave Flaubert

Galileo Galilei

Edward Gibbon

Vincent van Gogh

Oliver Goldsmith 

Thomas Hobbes

Horace

David Hume

Washington Irving

Henry James

Franz Kafka

Immanuel Kant

Soren Kierkegaard

Charles Lamb

T. E. Lawrence

Meriwether Lewis

Philip Larkin

Gottfried Leibniz

John Locke

Michelangelo 

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sir Isaac Newton 

Blaise Pascal 

Alexander Pope 

Marcel Proust

Maurice Ravel 

George Santayana

Jean Paul Sartre

Franz Schubert

Benedict de Spinoza 

Arthur Schopenhauer 

Herbert Spencer

Adam Smith

Stendhal

Jonathon Swift

Nikola Tesla

Henry David Thoreau

Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec 

Leonardo da Vinci

Voltaire 

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Similarly the contributions of the many (ostensibly) celibate medieval monks and theologians (Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Desiderius Erasmus, Michael Servetus) were essential in draggingEurope out of the dark Age of Faith and paving the way for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. 

Some years ago a noted Japanese researcher analyzed the biographical data of some 280 famous mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and biologists and discovered that all peaked professionally in their twenties, at which point their careers spiraled downward. Married scientists suffered the worst decline in productivity. However, those who never married remained highly productive well into their fifties. "Scientists tend to 'desist' from scientific research upon marriage,” the researcher told an interviewer, “just like criminals desist from crime upon marriage." One theory suggests married men lack an evolutionary reason to continue working hard (i.e., to attract females). Though it likely they similarly lack the prerequisite time and solitude.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/Orlet/Bachelorhood_And_Its_Discontents/