Most influential people of all-time

The little Jew who wrote the bible?

I think it's difficult to say. It really depends on what you consider the most meaningful influence. For example, Napoleon is arguably one of the largest influences on modern law. Jesus would be one of the largest influences on modern morality. To give one person the title of most influential, particularly of all time, is fairly difficult and would probably depend on what you care about most.

Oh, if I really had to choose one, I'd say Thales.

Jesus is among the tops of the list.... but whoever the dudes were that learned to start a fire and the dude who invented the wheel... gotta go with them 1st and then Jesus.

Republic Now! said:

I think it's difficult to say. It really depends on what you consider the most meaningful influence. For example, Napoleon is arguably one of the largest influences on modern law. Jesus would be one of the largest influences on modern morality. To give one person the title of most influential, particularly of all time, is fairly difficult and would probably depend on what you care about most.

Oh, if I really had to choose one, I'd say Thales.

Click to expand...

Jesus came from traditions that were and still are influencing law on an international level. His work helped spread those traditions so it seems Nappy is trumped on that one.

I went with Sir Issac Newton out of that list.

Though Jesus has been influential to a lot of religious people...there are many who simply don't believe and are not influenced at all by him.

Everyone is influenced by Newton. He discovered laws in physics that are taught today. His influence is not restricted to religious people. Everyone knows the law of gravity.

His three laws of motion are taught today to everyone who takes a basic science course.

1) Law of inertia
2) Law of acceleration
3) For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action.

Not to mention his further development of astronomy...He basically change the way of thinking from what was taught by Keplar.

First, he demonstrated that the motion of objects on the Earth could be described by three new Laws of motion, and then he went on to show that Kepler's three Laws of Planetary Motion were but special cases of Newton's three Laws if a force of a particular kind (what we now know to be the gravitational force) were postulated to exist between all objects in the Universe having mass. In fact, Newton went even further: he showed that Kepler's Laws of planetary motion were only approximately correct, and supplied the quantitative corrections that with careful observations proved to be valid.

While true, the impact of Jesus's take or life upon the definition of Western civilization for the past 2000 years is truly staggering.