Who was the Greatest person in History?

[Booger]

Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

[Zbyszek]

Originally posted by Admiral_Kolchak


Na Rusi vozmozhno tol'ko odno: Vera Pravoslavnaia Vlast' Samoderzhavnaia !

[/b]

The above statement is a kind of striking oxymoron:

My thinking goes deeply back to depth and vitality of humane imprint left by the person involved.
Thus, I have no doubt:
The first person who deserves such a title was Jesus, son of Mary.
Two milleniums have passed since his death and his words are still appealing.
His life was everything which Vlast' Samoderzhavnaia absolutely lacks.
Taken literally, anarchist society would be the closest to his ideals. We are still slowly and clumsily approaching this level.
Unfortunately, rulers like Neron, Ivan the Terrible or Stalin would be among the first to crucify Him again.
Two milleniums after His death we come back to his (then and now) revolutionary idea of building social structures transcending national boundaries.

[limey_defence]

Jesus? But wait...there is actually no proof he ever existed getting his name out of some book written so long ago cannot say he ever existed. And a man who never existed cannot be the greatest man in history.

[Voyager13b]

Originally posted by limey_defence
Jesus? But wait...there is actually no proof he ever existed getting his name out of some book written so long ago cannot say he ever existed. And a man who never existed cannot be the greatest man in history.

Limey,

What would you require as proof of existence? Multiple first person accounts of the life and times of a person don't count? It seems pretty clear that Jesus lived. Even if you don't consider the millions of people that consider him to be God, there is plenty of historical evidence that he was a real man. Likewise, I look at Mohammed as an early version of a snake oil salesman (which is to say that I don't buy his line), but from the historical record, I have no doubt that he lived. Did Henry the 8th really exist?
Just wondering


Voyager

[limey_defence]

No, Henry the 8th never existed, paintings, writings, war memorials the reformal of Church just happened.
Henry was a few hundred years ago and all accounts of him all interlink, all the paintings of him are of the same man. The whole history of Church Reformal, writings written then lead back to one man, Henry VIII.
Jesus, no actual drawings or paintings. No realistic stories about the man. If a man called Jesus did exist, which I'm sure he did. Some kind of carpenter who's mother had the milkman but her husband claimed it to be immaculate conception. Maybe he is only famous through his fathers idiocy. However the Jesus that people know, there is no way of existence. The accounts of rebirth, water into wine and the other miricles are nothing but someones over active imagination therefore he cannot be the Greatest man in History. With all the continous change of testaments, disagreements on the same Jesus story cannot stand has hard evidence that anything in Bible happened.

[KoshkaKonekoKat]

I only know one truely great Russian Czar and that was Alexander II who, quite belatedly, liberated the Serfs of Russia.

The Greates person of all times would be Jesus Christ, followed by Buddah and Mahatmas Ghandi. The greatest American Leader was Henri David Thoreau, followed by Citizen Thomas Payne. [/b][/quote]

I always thought Catharine I would have been a good czar if she hadn't been forced to retract her reforms.

Henry David Thoreau? I guess he led the New England states a bit, but his policy of anti-materialism has never sunk in to Americans in general.
And Thomas Paine was English...he just sided with the Americans.

Chao mi amigos, Gato el Pato

[Panzerschreck]

Originally posted by limey_defence
Jesus? But wait...there is actually no proof he ever existed getting his name out of some book written so long ago cannot say he ever existed. And a man who never existed cannot be the greatest man in history.

How could you ever know if King Charles 1 ever existed?? his name was written in a book. After two thousand years, will people of that time belive that King Charles 1 existed?
But did King Arthur really existed??(Minus Merlin and other magic)