Who's been the most influential ''public person'' to you and why?

Who's been the most influential ''public person'' to you and why?

For me, it would be John Dee, 16th century english mathematician, astronomer, and alchemist.
He really woke up my eyes on the subjects of self improvement, love and magic.

 

It wold be a toss up between Friedrich Nietzsche, and Elbert Hubbard.
Nietzche tells us; To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
This tracks with the Japanese Proverb, “Nana korobi ya oki” or Fall down seven times, get up eight.
But Hubbard takes a more wistful approach, telling us, "Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive."

 

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Most influential person.....................my mom.

Mzzls

 

Thomas Sowell.

 

Timothy Leary.
Do you really need to ask why?

I think the question should be for an "historical" person. Some of these mentioned were never popular or public in my lifetime.

 

That is a very difficult question to answer, since I have great admiration for different people in various aspects of my life.

In engineering it is undoubtedly Brunel. Shipyards out in the east are still improving their designs by going back to the Great Eastern, mainly for fuel efficiency, coal was very heavy to carry in his day.
Unfortunately, Brunel neither played the piano, or sung in any operas.

Rachmaninoff is my idol in music. What better example than his 18th variation on an original theme by Paganini.

 

John Wheeler, a famous physicist who led the debate in quantum mechanics for thirty years. He was definitely a bit of a curmudgeon, Oscar the Grouch kind of academic, a serious dedicated physicist but, for whatever reason, he came to believe in the existence of the Collective Unconscious, and earned my respect for life when he vigorously protested the AAAS for including psychic research among their ranks, when they never did meet their criteria for a valid science. He reminded me of my father, who was a bit of an Archie Bunker, but my hero, who taught me the value of personal integrity.

We're all flawed human beings, ascending the Stairway to Heaven, but the truth itself speaks louder than words.

 

Ironic considering that I had to Google Timothy Leary because I'd never heard of him.

 

Aldous Huxley. Author of The Doors of Perception, social satirist, cultural critic. Philosophically minded, first used psychedelics in the 1950s. Screenplay writer, lecturer. Knew Heard, Osmond, Leary... also many artists. In the 1950s (when I was a wee kid), he claimed that public opinion would increasingly be shaped by subtle, sly technological messaging. Also warned about ecological destruction.

 

Da Vinci. You know why.

 

Very nice passage in that video. There's an element in the piano part that is very similar to something Eric Satie wrote... I'm talking brief, like one bar, but repeated. Possibly both of the composers adapted from something earlier. ??

 

Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: created calculus

 

As you might have guessed, definitely Jesus! The Buddha and Marcus Borg are close contenders for second place, and Laotse deserves honorable mention.