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Greatest People of All Time
Who were the greatest people of all time and why? "Greatest" could mean a lot of different things. I'm leaving it purposely vague so it is up to your own interpretation. Also, when I ask "why" I'm not talking so much about what they accomplished. I'm talking more about what character traits, skills, etc. made them great.
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pauli and heisenberg have to be up there imo
edit: a cursory and informal list in no order whatsoever nietzsche kafka borges heisenberg pauli einstein shakespeare goethe beethoven mahler schoenberg newton bohr singer (the painter) monet munch cummings joyce zoschenko dostoyevsky oppenheimer plath miles davis martin luther king jr and a bunch of science/medicine people i can't remember |
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I was thinking about this the other day. I think Einstein in 1905 had the single greatest year in human history hands down. I have no idea what/who/when number 2 is.
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einstein doing the relativity theory entirely by himself is pretty impressive. i think it certainly stands good competition against any other year in any other individuals life.
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Plato, C.F. Gauss, and Fermi spring to mind as being as damn near irreplaceable as anyone who has ever lived.
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pauli and heisenberg have to be up there imo edit: a cursory and informal list in no order whatsoever nietzsche kafka borges heisenberg pauli einstein shakespeare goethe beethoven mahler schoenberg newton bohr singer (the painter) monet munch cummings joyce zoschenko dostoyevsky oppenheimer plath miles davis martin luther king jr and a bunch of science/medicine people i can't remember [/ QUOTE ] Galen and Ostler for medicine. |
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fermi was good, plato sort of... relucantly has to be on there, probably kant too, and that guy with the peas in the monastary...
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fermi was good, plato sort of... relucantly has to be on there, probably kant too, and that guy with the peas in the monastary... [/ QUOTE ] Mendel. |
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btw, because i am not mature enough for SMP,
in before "jesus" |
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btw, because i am not mature enough for SMP, in before "jesus" [/ QUOTE ] I'm willing to stipulate Jesus just because I am too tired for the discussion that follows whenever Jesus is mentioned. |
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Also, just going for obscurity, there are probably very few men in history who have ever saved more lives than Ignatius Semmelweis.
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fermi was good, plato sort of... relucantly has to be on there, probably kant too, and that guy with the peas in the monastary... [/ QUOTE ] Why reluctant on Plato? Maybe nobody agrees with him today, but for literally millenia he represented an intellectual and humanistic nobility that inspired the entire Western world. Surely that counts for something. |
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my suggestions are probably very biased towards who i consider the greatest artists of all time (writers, etc) but i think the following are also fair contributions (as well as agreeing with all of vhawks except jesus)
martin buber david hume kurt vonnegut jr jessica alba derrida* ts eliot descartes husserl levinas merleau-ponty martin dillon * it is only with reluctance and a recently found admiration that i list derrida, most of whose writings i have not found particularly great... but "h.c. for life, that is to say . . ." is good enough to outweigh the bad by far imo, so i'm listing him just for that book. |
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I am going to put forth Michael Jordan.
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Why reluctant on Plato? Maybe nobody agrees with him today, but for literally millenia he represented an intellectual and humanistic nobility that inspired the entire Western world. Surely that counts for something. [/ QUOTE ] you're totally correct, I meant reluctant in the sense that I just don't like Plato, not that I doubted his place in the list of greatest people. there's no disputing that you're right, I just have personal vendettas against 3 or 4 philosophers because I am deranged, and he is one of them. |
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Huh, I'm surprised no one has mentioned my favorite philosopher (and the best philosopher of all time, IMO) Bertrand Russel. He definitely makes the list.
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yeah here's 2 for Russel
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Clearly Julio Franco deserves a spot in the Human Hall of Fame
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Clearly Julio Franco deserves a spot in the Human Hall of Fame [/ QUOTE ] Maybe the Universe Ripley's Believe It or Not? |
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Joseph Campbell
David Attenborough |
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Nielsio
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I don't think any artist can really compare to a great scientist in this debate. I feel like if you remove a single artist or writer it would suck to not have their work but things would be pretty much the same. Of course if Einstein never existed we would have found everything he discovered but it is hard to tell how long it would have taken. For an artist to have that kind of impace it would have to be something like lving in a world where Go Dog Go is considered a great piece of literature and Shakesphere comes along and gives us Hamlet. I don't think anything like that has evern happened.
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I don't think any artist can really compare to a great scientist in this debate. I feel like if you remove a single artist or writer it would suck to not have their work but things would be pretty much the same. Of course if Einstein never existed we would have found everything he discovered but it is hard to tell how long it would have taken. For an artist to have that kind of impace it would have to be something like lving in a world where Go Dog Go is considered a great piece of literature and Shakesphere comes along and gives us Hamlet. I don't think anything like that has evern happened. [/ QUOTE ] I think thats a pretty decent argument. I'm not some philistine who thinks art is useless or that "my 5 year old nephew could do that" but I think that you can legitimately say that if Van Gogh never lived we'd never notice the difference, and the NEXT best painter ever would give everyone just as much pleasure. Art seems to me to be more of a relative accomplishment. Maybe I'm way off, I admittedly know very little about art. Wheras someone who invented some useful technology has an objective and calculable impact on the world that is irreplacable. Sure someone would have eventually made the same discovery (probably) but that would have taken X years and resulted in Y millions of people suffering. |
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chuck noris iirc
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If greatness is easing the suffering of humanity then it would be hard to leave out transcendent artists.
My additions: Mozart The Beatles Andy Warhol Leonardo Da Vinci (can't believe no one has said this yet) Michael Jordan (seriously) Ghandi Confucius Aristotle Alexander the Great Isaac Newton Babe Ruth Charles Darwin John Locke Hobbes Thomas Paine Abraham Lincoln Benjamin Franklin Muhammad Ali The Wright Brothers Rosa Parks Rockefeller Alexander Graham Bell Cesar Chavez FDR Bill Gates Nikola Tesla Galileo George Washington J.S. Mill Thomas Edison Caesar Picasso Magellan |
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Einstein. Not for the scientific accomplishments themselves, but for the in-your-face confrontation with the non-reality of reality. Up until them we were just swapping about various views of an understandable universe.---
The earth is flat ... nope, it's sphere. The sun orbits the earth ... nope, the earth is orbiting. Frogs emerge spontaneously from mud ...nope. Time not being time, space not being space, speed not being speed .. not that they were changed but changed into properties that we don't relate to. Until Einstein we were just rearranging the furniture. luckyme |
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Limiting to the as yet unmentioned:
Politics: Madison Jefferson Lech Walesa Philosophy: That Buddha dude Popper Art: De Niro Orson Welles Groening Dylan Misc: Mandela |
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More:
Copernicus Pythagoras Euclid Parmenides Columbus Guttenberg Karl Marx Napolean Machiavelli Decartes St. Augustine Freud Voltaire Francis Bacon Henry Ford Homer James Cook Marco Polo Socrates Aquinas Adam Smith |
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These are some very good lists. My additions that I didn't see already would have to be:
Richard Feynman (just a badass) Alan Turing (persecuted for being homosexual, years ahead of his time, basically invented the computer) John Bardeen, William Shockley, Walter Brattain (won 1956 nobel prize for inventing the transistor, most fundamental unit of all modern electronics) Eli Whitney (industrial revolution pioneer, convinced the world that interchangeable parts would lead to a whole new standard of living. Oh yeah and he invented the cotton gin.) Carl Rogers Darnall (suggested chlorinating drinking water, number of lives saved is off the charts) |
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No love for Euler, most prolific of mathematicians?
Most of the others I would name have already been named. For a short list I am reluctant to include anyone who merely happened to be first to an idea that was "in the air" - I wonder whether anything from Fermi or Feynman or the transistor guys was really more than a few years ahead of its time. In math, Euclid and Gauss are in... but I wouldn't list either Newton or Leibniz, since they both came to the calculus, and their calculus was really just evolutionary from things like Cavalieri's Method for volumns. In music, I would list Beethoven and Wagner, for doing what had not been done before - but not Bach or Mahler, as much as I love their music, it was more backward- than forward-looking so much of the time. Another nominee from antiquity: Akhenaton, for some very progressive politics and a willingness to turn an old religion upside down. He got killed for his trouble, of course. |
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[ QUOTE ] btw, because i am not mature enough for SMP, in before "jesus" [/ QUOTE ] I'm willing to stipulate Jesus just because I am too tired for the discussion that follows whenever Jesus is mentioned. [/ QUOTE ] Monty Python |
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That's a shame to not mention Darwin!
Aristotel Newton Darwin Einstein Max Plank Top 5 [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. |
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Caesar Augustus.
The greatest politician of all time without question. Ended civil war and created the Roman peace which lasted 300 years. Brought Rome into a golden age in which many of the greatest artists and works of art were produced. Turned Rome from a Republic into an Empire which lasted until the middle ages. Probably had the most amount of impact on a single civilization out of any person in history, and inadvertedly has impacted our own. |
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Also, just going for obscurity, there are probably very few men in history who have ever saved more lives than Ignatius Semmelweis. [/ QUOTE ] Jesus Saves FTW! All kidding aside: Jesus (who's obviously in a class all by himself) is the number one person of all time! An extremely distant second: all of the Apostles An even more distant third: Socrates and Plato and their whole crowd (Socrates essentially preached the doctrine of moderation. Its interesting to note that God told Paul in a dream to go to the Greeks. Maybe God knew something about the Greeks philosophy and openess to God's word?) I have to seriously study history to make any more nominations to this "Greatest People of All Time Group". Acts 16 (The Message) The Message (MSG) Eugene H. Peterson Acts 16 A Dream Gave Paul His Map 1-3Paul came first to Derbe, then Lystra. He found a disciple there by the name of Timothy, son of a devout Jewish mother and Greek father. Friends in Lystra and Iconium all said what a fine young man he was. Paul wanted to recruit him for their mission, but first took him aside and circumcised him so he wouldn't offend the Jews who lived in those parts. They all knew that his father was Greek. 4-5As they traveled from town to town, they presented the simple guidelines the Jerusalem apostles and leaders had come up with. That turned out to be most helpful. Day after day the congregations became stronger in faith and larger in size. 6-8They went to Phrygia, and then on through the region of Galatia. Their plan was to turn west into Asia province, but the Holy Spirit blocked that route. So they went to Mysia and tried to go north to Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus wouldn't let them go there either. Proceeding on through Mysia, they went down to the seaport Troas. 9-10That night Paul had a dream: A Macedonian stood on the far shore and called across the sea, "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" The dream gave Paul his map. We went to work at once getting things ready to cross over to Macedonia. All the pieces had come together. We knew now for sure that God had called us to preach the good news to the Europeans. 11-12Putting out from the harbor at Troas, we made a straight run for Samothrace. The next day we tied up at New City and walked from there to Philippi, the main city in that part of Macedonia and, even more importantly, a Roman colony. We lingered there several days. |
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Jesus (who's obviously in a class all by himself) is the number one person of all time! [/ QUOTE ] That may not be so obvious to a lot of other people |
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[ QUOTE ] Jesus (who's obviously in a class all by himself) is the number one person of all time! [/ QUOTE ] That may not be so obvious to a lot of other people [/ QUOTE ] Sure it is. Either he's the greatest man of all time, or he's the greatest scam artist of all time. |
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[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Jesus (who's obviously in a class all by himself) is the number one person of all time! [/ QUOTE ] That may not be so obvious to a lot of other people [/ QUOTE ] Sure it is. Either he's the greatest man of all time, or he's the greatest scam artist of all time. [/ QUOTE ] I misread his statement a bit. I glanced and thought it read "obviously the number one person of all time". What he actually said is different, and you're right about the greatest man/greatest scam artist. But even if it turns out that Christianity's all a scam should the blame rest on Jesus? |
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[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Jesus (who's obviously in a class all by himself) is the number one person of all time! [/ QUOTE ] That may not be so obvious to a lot of other people [/ QUOTE ] Sure it is. Either he's the greatest man of all time, or he's the greatest scam artist of all time. [/ QUOTE ] Hardly a scam with a line of prophets spanning 1500 years promising he'd come and saying what he'd do before he got here. |
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[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Jesus (who's obviously in a class all by himself) is the number one person of all time! [/ QUOTE ] That may not be so obvious to a lot of other people [/ QUOTE ] Sure it is. Either he's the greatest man of all time, or he's the greatest scam artist of all time. [/ QUOTE ] Hardly a scam with a line of prophets spanning 1500 years promising he'd come and saying what he'd do before he got here. [/ QUOTE ] the scammed rarely realize they've been duped |
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